***
1
I heard one of the new Congressmen say recently, "We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem!" He was very certain about that. I have heard other national leaders interviewed saying much the same thing, just as emphatically.
What I have not heard is on what basis this firm conviction is grounded.
2
It is true that we have a national debt of a size that is very rare for our country. As a percentage of the U. S. Gross Domestic Product, our current debt is even higher than the national debts of many other developed countries such as Germany or Sweden. Our normal, or expected level of national debt - it may be worth remembering - is quite a bit lower than those planned in other developed countries.
The size of our current debt could be a problem under certain circumstances, such as a reasonable chance of domestic inflation or international fear for the stability of the U. S. economy when compared with the economic stability of other developed nations.
Neither of these circumstances faces us today. The U. S. economy is still the largest and most trusted in the world, even though the worldwide Great Recession has caused significant economic problems here as in other countries.
And far from there being reasonable fear of inflation in our country, it is generally agreed that we have only recently escaped the danger of deflation, falling prices rather than falling value in the dollar. In other words, the probability of the opposite of inflation - as far as we can tell - is greater than the likelihood of inflation.
Still, since either condition could possibly become a reality at some time in the future, it is prudent to keep the amount we add to the current national debt as small as possible.
3
Additions to the national debt occur when current government spending exceeds government revenues. In a controlled capitalistic economy such as our own, government revenues come from federal taxes, not from corporations owned by the government.
Adjusted for normal inflation over the years, our government's revenues today are considerably lower than they have been in the past because of the many reductions in federal taxes over the last 30 years. Tax revenues have fallen especially because of the reduction of taxes on the wealthy, since the wealthy have been counted on to pay the largest share of federal taxes for 100 years or so, as they do in the other developed countries. Such taxing is also a basic feature of modern capitalism.
And, most obviously, our tax revenues are significantly lower in 2011 because of the Great Recession of 2008-2010, from which we have just begun to recover. The long-term unemployed pay little income tax, if any. Businesses earning fewer dollars than in the recent past pay less tax too; those that are bankrupt may pay none.
Even adjusted for inflation, government spending today is half the percentage of GDP of what it was in 1946. It is below its level of the mid-1950s, a period cited as highly prosperous for our country. The level of national debt today is comparable to what it was 20 years ago.
The level of the national debt clearly is not a matter of urgent concern, especially when compared to the high rate of unemployment and the stagnant or falling income of 75% or 80% of Americans.
4
There may be some spending problems that need to be addressed. However, the national debt is less a cause for worry than the fragile condition of the economy or the injustice of the current tax system.
***
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Poem: Roman Vista
***
He stands on the roof, on the tall windblown tower
………overlooking the city--
Gazing past the tiled roofs clustered near beneath Him,
Past the brown, green, and black shingles covering the low
………and cool residences imbedded in the cedary hills
………forming a bowl to cradle His tower under Him,
Past the white cotton clouds, through the azure liquid sky,
………beyond the sun and the heavens, into nowhere.
He smiles and the sun glows warmly,
Sending fire into all natural things--
………tree, bush, dog, or man and woman--
Inducing all who wake or ever stirred on earth to peace--
………to peaceful, hot oblivion.
He laughs and the clouds start to move,
Enshrouding themselves
………with black violet,
Encircling the sun, shutting out its light
………but not its soporific heat.
He roars, and thunder stumbles out from behind the hills
………and careens through the clouds,
Smashing the peace with heavy, loud, bootsteps
………that roll back and forth in the hills' cradles.
A tear builds in His eye, larger, until it bleeds
……….down His soft cheek, and the rains
Begin to stroke the fertile soil,
Splashing the gutters with a coolish clearness
………restoring peace once more.
He sobs, and the cool of the rain turns to heat,
Boiling the tile-covered roofs
………and the trees
...........and everything beneath Him
………with fever.
He sobs again and the clear waters
………turn to filth,
Coating everything touched by the searing rain
………with a blistering, sticky mud.
He cries on and on, and the rain turns to fire
as it pounds the earth,
Kindling the city, the trees,
the roofs, the streets, the gutters,
even His own tower
With flames that shoot up
into the cotton clouds,
Billowing smoke to the liquid sky.
Finding his violin, still crying,
He plays wild songs
into the fire and ash,
Bowing and laughing at the same time
until the whole city is destroyed
and even His tower is steaming
Black rubble
beneath the quietly smiling sun.
***
He stands on the roof, on the tall windblown tower
………overlooking the city--
Gazing past the tiled roofs clustered near beneath Him,
Past the brown, green, and black shingles covering the low
………and cool residences imbedded in the cedary hills
………forming a bowl to cradle His tower under Him,
Past the white cotton clouds, through the azure liquid sky,
………beyond the sun and the heavens, into nowhere.
He smiles and the sun glows warmly,
Sending fire into all natural things--
………tree, bush, dog, or man and woman--
Inducing all who wake or ever stirred on earth to peace--
………to peaceful, hot oblivion.
He laughs and the clouds start to move,
Enshrouding themselves
………with black violet,
Encircling the sun, shutting out its light
………but not its soporific heat.
He roars, and thunder stumbles out from behind the hills
………and careens through the clouds,
Smashing the peace with heavy, loud, bootsteps
………that roll back and forth in the hills' cradles.
A tear builds in His eye, larger, until it bleeds
……….down His soft cheek, and the rains
Begin to stroke the fertile soil,
Splashing the gutters with a coolish clearness
………restoring peace once more.
He sobs, and the cool of the rain turns to heat,
Boiling the tile-covered roofs
………and the trees
...........and everything beneath Him
………with fever.
He sobs again and the clear waters
………turn to filth,
Coating everything touched by the searing rain
………with a blistering, sticky mud.
He cries on and on, and the rain turns to fire
as it pounds the earth,
Kindling the city, the trees,
the roofs, the streets, the gutters,
even His own tower
With flames that shoot up
into the cotton clouds,
Billowing smoke to the liquid sky.
Finding his violin, still crying,
He plays wild songs
into the fire and ash,
Bowing and laughing at the same time
until the whole city is destroyed
and even His tower is steaming
Black rubble
beneath the quietly smiling sun.
***
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Deductions and Conclusions (from Essays)
***
1. Founding Principles
… American culture grows out of the dual between our great intellectual, legal, and social heritage and our practical desire to overcome real, material dangers and risks.
The Secrets of American Success 2/12/10
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10
As issues arise in the public debate, it seems obvious that [the] founding principles [in the Preamble to the Constitution] should be the first considerations in our minds as we attempt to decide where we stand. We should not argue for a proposal, that is, merely because it "seems right" to us at the time. The prohibition against one person's freedom impinging on that of another must be considered as well. What is obviously right from my point of view is not necessarily what seems right from another's perspective; I do not have the right to impose my belief on others, unless my view of what is right also serves the national purpose as described in the Preamble.
Present Implications of the Constitution 5/2/10
A political party that is based on these six freedoms – [freedom] from fear, want, force and violence, injustice, and unequal opportunity – and that actively, proudly, and aggressively pursues them would be one we could enthusiastically support. Yet somehow, I am inclined to think that the actions of the party [claiming to be “based on freedom”] are not in fact founded on principles of freedom as I understand it, or at least not on freedom for all.
Freedom in America: Who Cares? 5/9/2010
It is much more useful both for ourselves and particularly for our nation, or any nation, to think in terms of right and wrong, rather than in terms of good and evil. Avoiding the temptation to think of public issues as absolutes, like good vs. evil, is not just wordplay …; it is significant … as well as useful and valuable.
Between evil and good, there is no possibility of finding a middle ground, no possible agreement, no peace. If we think of behaviors in the contentious issues that divide us as moral or immoral, we are much more likely to be able to approach them rationally, without dogma, bias, or superstition, and with a practical chance to move toward understanding and accommodation of others’ opposing views and beliefs.
Beware of Evil (and of Good also) 1/25/10
We need … leaders and newscasters who are bold enough to tell us that the world we have to deal with is not simple and easy, but difficult and complicated. They can flatter our vanity by saying to us, “I know you would prefer to be moved, but it is more important for you to be informed.” But whether they flatter us or not, they need to appeal to our highest ideals and our highest abilities, our abilities to listen and learn, to seek the real truth rather than the “simple truth,” to seek to become fully informed and to think for ourselves.
If we continue to prefer simple platitudes to careful explanations, if we continue to prefer to have our leaders appeal to us through emotion rather than reason, we have little hope of adequately facing up to the hard realities surrounding us.
The Simple and the Complex 7/24/10
Since so many loud media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold, and identify opponents of these views as enemies to be hated and attacked - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized to "defend the faith," and they can be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.
Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.
Dealing With Fanatics 6/20/10
Today, we can see honor systems driving unempowered and impoverished peoples, from the Middle East to Los Angeles (and all the other cities with powerful gangs), from Congo to New Guinea. A gang member may murder someone who is considered to have “disrespected” that individual, in other words to have wounded his honor. But such a system – or code – was still strong enough to tie our late eighteenth-century patriots together as they undertook their most treacherous endeavor in 1776.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were proud men seeking to establish a social system of just laws, bound to their cause by a real sense of their sacred honor.
Pride, Revenge, and Honor 9/10/10
The cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.
These basic values must be kept foremost in our minds as we consider any proposed change in government. The size and forms of government as well as methods used to determine the size of each income-earner’s fair share of its funding should be decided not on some abstract or dogmatic principle about either the size of government or about the amount of taxes imposed on everyone; but about making government better and the tax system more just.
Too Much Government? Not Enough? Taxes? 7/15/2010
…The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. For us to belittle or deride its provision for equal civil rights to all citizens is unpatriotic and un-American, whether one is referring to the duties of the Judicial branch of the U. S. government or to the way we speak and write about each other.
The California Decision and Political Correctness 8/27/10
The question, then, about conservatives who claim they are champions of freedom is, "Who do they want to be free?" Libertines value only their own personal freedom to do as they please. Libertarians certainly value their own freedom, but also seem to think it would be good for everyone else to be free too, although how that could come about is unclear. Everyone with enough money, as produced by the current social order, which is dominated by rich global corporations, are those who conservatives seem to want to be free. Liberals, unlike libertines or libertarians, or even some conservatives, claim to be working to bring a significant degree of freedom to everyone (except perhaps to criminals who threaten both individuals and society).
The socially difficult issue of where the right balance is between the good of the individual and the good of society is exacerbated today by the morally difficult issue of to whom a significant degree of freedom should be extended.
Liberals, Libertarians, and Libertines: and Freedom 11/26/10
2. Government
As long as we are at war, in two distant lands, if we are to have good government in the United States of America, our government will need to be better funded than it is today. This would be true even if we had no corruption (such as paying unscrupulous corporations grossly inflated fees or winking at wealthy companies’ or individuals’ unwise or unprincipled actions).
Our government is under-funded. We do not want to take on more debt. Our only remaining alternative is to devise a raise in our taxes that the majority of Americans, despite our distrust and our desire for immediate gratification, can recognize as fair and just to all.
To fail to accept this conclusion, is to prevent our nation from moving forward, as we all want.
Why We Don’t Want Higher Taxes 7/15/2010
Facing the indefinite continuation of both our time of war and our time of recession, our government – if it is responsible – will inevitably raise its expenditures beyond current levels; this is the greater good in our time. To finance this additional spending, we should consider a modest raise in the national debt and a modest increase in the taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
In Times of War, Times of Recession 8/3/10
If the House [of Representatives] procedures favor the need for action a bit more than the protection of the minority’s opportunity to voice its views, more than standard parliamentary procedure; then the Senate procedure favors very significantly the minority power over the need for the whole body to take action. The result is that in our Congress, we do not have a proper balance between, on the one hand, the need to hear contrary opinions and on the other, the need (of all citizens) for Congress to take action.
Let’s End This Debate! 2/4/10
The question of timing is very important in any form of dispute-resolution. …Also of critical importance is to avoid offering to give up something one desires too early in the process.
Doing so, even if what is given up is less important than what one gains, short-circuits the process which if allowed to take its course might allow limiting the final concession to only a portion of the valuable objective; whereas offering the major concession too early guarantees the loss of that desirable gain and – even worse – causes the negotiations to start with the assumption that the other side will make a minor concession, as a response to the offered bargain, and will go on to seek further concessions from the first party. The key in seeking compromise, as in resolving disputes through agreement or consensus, is to start by asking for everything one hopes to achieve and only then being willing to make compromises – first on minor objectives – only in return for significant concessions from the other side.
Compromise: Good? Bad? When? 2/4/10
It may not be a Constitutional matter, …but everyone professes to believe that only legal aptitude and experience matter in the selection of a Supreme Court Justice. But the fact is that many Senators – and especially today, most Republican Senators - clearly don’t really believe this. Why lie about it?
Could it be that Senators recognize that a great majority of the electorate believes that neither the nomination nor the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice should be based primarily on partisan politics?
Supreme Court Appointments and Politics 8/15/10
For all these reasons, it is difficult for large media outlets to focus their reports where they should: on what’s at stake in an election really, truly, and accurately, taking upon themselves responsibility for the facts they report.
Elections and the Media 10/19/10
So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals.
Corporations Are Not People, Are They? 12/17/10
[repeat]
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10
***
1. Founding Principles
… American culture grows out of the dual between our great intellectual, legal, and social heritage and our practical desire to overcome real, material dangers and risks.
The Secrets of American Success 2/12/10
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10
As issues arise in the public debate, it seems obvious that [the] founding principles [in the Preamble to the Constitution] should be the first considerations in our minds as we attempt to decide where we stand. We should not argue for a proposal, that is, merely because it "seems right" to us at the time. The prohibition against one person's freedom impinging on that of another must be considered as well. What is obviously right from my point of view is not necessarily what seems right from another's perspective; I do not have the right to impose my belief on others, unless my view of what is right also serves the national purpose as described in the Preamble.
Present Implications of the Constitution 5/2/10
A political party that is based on these six freedoms – [freedom] from fear, want, force and violence, injustice, and unequal opportunity – and that actively, proudly, and aggressively pursues them would be one we could enthusiastically support. Yet somehow, I am inclined to think that the actions of the party [claiming to be “based on freedom”] are not in fact founded on principles of freedom as I understand it, or at least not on freedom for all.
Freedom in America: Who Cares? 5/9/2010
It is much more useful both for ourselves and particularly for our nation, or any nation, to think in terms of right and wrong, rather than in terms of good and evil. Avoiding the temptation to think of public issues as absolutes, like good vs. evil, is not just wordplay …; it is significant … as well as useful and valuable.
Between evil and good, there is no possibility of finding a middle ground, no possible agreement, no peace. If we think of behaviors in the contentious issues that divide us as moral or immoral, we are much more likely to be able to approach them rationally, without dogma, bias, or superstition, and with a practical chance to move toward understanding and accommodation of others’ opposing views and beliefs.
Beware of Evil (and of Good also) 1/25/10
We need … leaders and newscasters who are bold enough to tell us that the world we have to deal with is not simple and easy, but difficult and complicated. They can flatter our vanity by saying to us, “I know you would prefer to be moved, but it is more important for you to be informed.” But whether they flatter us or not, they need to appeal to our highest ideals and our highest abilities, our abilities to listen and learn, to seek the real truth rather than the “simple truth,” to seek to become fully informed and to think for ourselves.
If we continue to prefer simple platitudes to careful explanations, if we continue to prefer to have our leaders appeal to us through emotion rather than reason, we have little hope of adequately facing up to the hard realities surrounding us.
The Simple and the Complex 7/24/10
Since so many loud media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold, and identify opponents of these views as enemies to be hated and attacked - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized to "defend the faith," and they can be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.
Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.
Dealing With Fanatics 6/20/10
Today, we can see honor systems driving unempowered and impoverished peoples, from the Middle East to Los Angeles (and all the other cities with powerful gangs), from Congo to New Guinea. A gang member may murder someone who is considered to have “disrespected” that individual, in other words to have wounded his honor. But such a system – or code – was still strong enough to tie our late eighteenth-century patriots together as they undertook their most treacherous endeavor in 1776.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were proud men seeking to establish a social system of just laws, bound to their cause by a real sense of their sacred honor.
Pride, Revenge, and Honor 9/10/10
The cardinal American values are peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty, and justice for all. These values should be pursued, supported, and honored above all others. Actions that threaten or diminish them should be avoided or prohibited, vilified, or at least highly taxed. Public leaders praising these essential values should be supported; those whose decisions undermine them should be hounded out of their positions of influence.
These basic values must be kept foremost in our minds as we consider any proposed change in government. The size and forms of government as well as methods used to determine the size of each income-earner’s fair share of its funding should be decided not on some abstract or dogmatic principle about either the size of government or about the amount of taxes imposed on everyone; but about making government better and the tax system more just.
Too Much Government? Not Enough? Taxes? 7/15/2010
…The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. For us to belittle or deride its provision for equal civil rights to all citizens is unpatriotic and un-American, whether one is referring to the duties of the Judicial branch of the U. S. government or to the way we speak and write about each other.
The California Decision and Political Correctness 8/27/10
The question, then, about conservatives who claim they are champions of freedom is, "Who do they want to be free?" Libertines value only their own personal freedom to do as they please. Libertarians certainly value their own freedom, but also seem to think it would be good for everyone else to be free too, although how that could come about is unclear. Everyone with enough money, as produced by the current social order, which is dominated by rich global corporations, are those who conservatives seem to want to be free. Liberals, unlike libertines or libertarians, or even some conservatives, claim to be working to bring a significant degree of freedom to everyone (except perhaps to criminals who threaten both individuals and society).
The socially difficult issue of where the right balance is between the good of the individual and the good of society is exacerbated today by the morally difficult issue of to whom a significant degree of freedom should be extended.
Liberals, Libertarians, and Libertines: and Freedom 11/26/10
2. Government
As long as we are at war, in two distant lands, if we are to have good government in the United States of America, our government will need to be better funded than it is today. This would be true even if we had no corruption (such as paying unscrupulous corporations grossly inflated fees or winking at wealthy companies’ or individuals’ unwise or unprincipled actions).
Our government is under-funded. We do not want to take on more debt. Our only remaining alternative is to devise a raise in our taxes that the majority of Americans, despite our distrust and our desire for immediate gratification, can recognize as fair and just to all.
To fail to accept this conclusion, is to prevent our nation from moving forward, as we all want.
Why We Don’t Want Higher Taxes 7/15/2010
Facing the indefinite continuation of both our time of war and our time of recession, our government – if it is responsible – will inevitably raise its expenditures beyond current levels; this is the greater good in our time. To finance this additional spending, we should consider a modest raise in the national debt and a modest increase in the taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
In Times of War, Times of Recession 8/3/10
If the House [of Representatives] procedures favor the need for action a bit more than the protection of the minority’s opportunity to voice its views, more than standard parliamentary procedure; then the Senate procedure favors very significantly the minority power over the need for the whole body to take action. The result is that in our Congress, we do not have a proper balance between, on the one hand, the need to hear contrary opinions and on the other, the need (of all citizens) for Congress to take action.
Let’s End This Debate! 2/4/10
The question of timing is very important in any form of dispute-resolution. …Also of critical importance is to avoid offering to give up something one desires too early in the process.
Doing so, even if what is given up is less important than what one gains, short-circuits the process which if allowed to take its course might allow limiting the final concession to only a portion of the valuable objective; whereas offering the major concession too early guarantees the loss of that desirable gain and – even worse – causes the negotiations to start with the assumption that the other side will make a minor concession, as a response to the offered bargain, and will go on to seek further concessions from the first party. The key in seeking compromise, as in resolving disputes through agreement or consensus, is to start by asking for everything one hopes to achieve and only then being willing to make compromises – first on minor objectives – only in return for significant concessions from the other side.
Compromise: Good? Bad? When? 2/4/10
It may not be a Constitutional matter, …but everyone professes to believe that only legal aptitude and experience matter in the selection of a Supreme Court Justice. But the fact is that many Senators – and especially today, most Republican Senators - clearly don’t really believe this. Why lie about it?
Could it be that Senators recognize that a great majority of the electorate believes that neither the nomination nor the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice should be based primarily on partisan politics?
Supreme Court Appointments and Politics 8/15/10
For all these reasons, it is difficult for large media outlets to focus their reports where they should: on what’s at stake in an election really, truly, and accurately, taking upon themselves responsibility for the facts they report.
Elections and the Media 10/19/10
So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals.
Corporations Are Not People, Are They? 12/17/10
[repeat]
The greatest thing about our great nation is the ideals upon which it was founded. If we are to continue America’s noble traditions and live up to our great mission in the world and in human history, we must do everything in our power to nurture, sustain, and pursue our essential values. Highly concentrated wealth and power threatens all that we hold most dear in the United States of America: peace and prosperity, equality of opportunity, liberty and justice for all.
The “Too Big to Fail” Discussion: the National Interest 4/18/10
***
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Encounter With The Chinese
***
My wife S----- was raised in a mid-sized Midwestern city. She went to a small religious college there too. She had met only one person who came directly from a non-English- speaking country in her life, a non-traditionally aged young man from China whom she thought was by now an architect. He had enrolled in the little liberal arts college primarily, my wife-to-be had speculated, in order to learn English. His name was Albert Liu (pronounced "loo").
We lived for a number of years where I could find my first professional job, in Washington, D. C. After a couple of years, I learned of a professional conference in New York City that I could attend, expenses paid. S----- and I decided we couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity to make our first visit to the big metropolis. The only unbooked hotel with the conference rates was located rather a distance from the conference... but, after all, the conference was the excuse, not the reason for the whole trip. (Don't tell my boss.)
For weeks we plotted how we would spend every hour of our three-day, two-night visit. We would take the bus to get there from D. C. and get around the city on the subway. We expected to do a lot of walking, which we thought would have the advantage of letting us see "the real city."
One of our favorite neighborhood restaurants in the Washington suburb where we lived was "The Golden Buddha" featuring the standard Cantonese fare. Although both S----- and I had visited New York before we married, neither of us had ever gone down to Chinatown. We thought now that on our second night, it would be great to have dinner there in an authentic ethnic Chinese restaurant.
That must have been why I knew about Al Liu in the first place:
"Let's have dinner one night in Chinatown," one of us might have said.
"I knew a Chinaman once..." S----- would have said...
So we studied the subway map to find on our line the most convenient station to Chinatown. We'd go early so we could wander around a while. We might eat first, though, in order to avoid the dinner crowd.
When we came up from underground, I was a little concerned to see that everything around us was not in Chinese, but Italian. A quick consult of the pocket map, however, made us think Chinatown was a block uptown, bordering "Little Italy" on the downtown side.
Sure enough, it was just a block or two away. We sauntered around, ogling the storefronts, fingering the little trinkets at the sidewalk stands, and casually checking out the restaurants. We wanted to find a backstreet, not pretentious (i.e. pricey) place where "real Chinese" people were going to eat.
And after a bit, we spotted just the right place. When we peered though the windows, trying not to be boorish tourists, the only folks we could see looked Asian. No tablecloths, little tables crowded together... We were sure this was the perfect spot. The only trouble was, they told us inside, that they were full and didn't expect to be sure to have room for us for a couple of hours yet.
It was a Friday, which meant the crowd showed up right after work and would then be heading home after a little while. But, no problem, we'd come early on purpose so we could look around. We told the nice Chinese lady we would return.
It was still rather crowded when we came back, we thought, but they found a table for us back by the kitchen. All of us were sort of elbow-to-elbow. I was facing the kitchen. S----- was facing the front door some distance away.
When the Asian teenager brought the tea, he provided us with the menus. Till then, we had just been looking around at all the people. If we were not the only Anglos present, it was close to that.
As I began to glance at the menu, S----- said brightly, "Hey, there's Al Liu."
I snorted.
"No. It's really him."
"Where?" I turned around, still thinking there was a punch line coming.
"At the table near the corner," S----- said, "with that gorgeous Chinese woman."
Well, I didn't get the joke, and besides after all that time walking around, I was feeling pretty hungry.
"I'm going over to say Hello," S----- said.
"Oh no, S-----," I said as it dawned on me that she might be serious. "Don't you remember what everybody says?!" I know they didn't all look alike, but still...
"I'll just go say Hi," she said and made her way forward.
I buried my head in the menu, already embarrassed. How could she fall for that?
She didn't come back right away, and I relaxed a little. She must have thought better of it and gone on to look for the restroom. That would be a good cover.
Then, over my shoulder came S-----'s voice: "'Byron'?" and as I turned, "I'd like you to meet Al Liu!"
Yes, it was indeed her college acquaintance. He was an architect now. In fact, it turned out he didn't live in New York but was only there for a short visit... because he actually lived in D. C.!
And the pretty woman with him was his girlfriend, the reigning "Miss Chinatown."
... And if it had been me, I would not have gone over to say Hello.
***
1
My wife S----- was raised in a mid-sized Midwestern city. She went to a small religious college there too. She had met only one person who came directly from a non-English- speaking country in her life, a non-traditionally aged young man from China whom she thought was by now an architect. He had enrolled in the little liberal arts college primarily, my wife-to-be had speculated, in order to learn English. His name was Albert Liu (pronounced "loo").
We lived for a number of years where I could find my first professional job, in Washington, D. C. After a couple of years, I learned of a professional conference in New York City that I could attend, expenses paid. S----- and I decided we couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity to make our first visit to the big metropolis. The only unbooked hotel with the conference rates was located rather a distance from the conference... but, after all, the conference was the excuse, not the reason for the whole trip. (Don't tell my boss.)
2
For weeks we plotted how we would spend every hour of our three-day, two-night visit. We would take the bus to get there from D. C. and get around the city on the subway. We expected to do a lot of walking, which we thought would have the advantage of letting us see "the real city."
One of our favorite neighborhood restaurants in the Washington suburb where we lived was "The Golden Buddha" featuring the standard Cantonese fare. Although both S----- and I had visited New York before we married, neither of us had ever gone down to Chinatown. We thought now that on our second night, it would be great to have dinner there in an authentic ethnic Chinese restaurant.
That must have been why I knew about Al Liu in the first place:
"Let's have dinner one night in Chinatown," one of us might have said.
"I knew a Chinaman once..." S----- would have said...
So we studied the subway map to find on our line the most convenient station to Chinatown. We'd go early so we could wander around a while. We might eat first, though, in order to avoid the dinner crowd.
3
When we came up from underground, I was a little concerned to see that everything around us was not in Chinese, but Italian. A quick consult of the pocket map, however, made us think Chinatown was a block uptown, bordering "Little Italy" on the downtown side.
Sure enough, it was just a block or two away. We sauntered around, ogling the storefronts, fingering the little trinkets at the sidewalk stands, and casually checking out the restaurants. We wanted to find a backstreet, not pretentious (i.e. pricey) place where "real Chinese" people were going to eat.
And after a bit, we spotted just the right place. When we peered though the windows, trying not to be boorish tourists, the only folks we could see looked Asian. No tablecloths, little tables crowded together... We were sure this was the perfect spot. The only trouble was, they told us inside, that they were full and didn't expect to be sure to have room for us for a couple of hours yet.
It was a Friday, which meant the crowd showed up right after work and would then be heading home after a little while. But, no problem, we'd come early on purpose so we could look around. We told the nice Chinese lady we would return.
4
It was still rather crowded when we came back, we thought, but they found a table for us back by the kitchen. All of us were sort of elbow-to-elbow. I was facing the kitchen. S----- was facing the front door some distance away.
When the Asian teenager brought the tea, he provided us with the menus. Till then, we had just been looking around at all the people. If we were not the only Anglos present, it was close to that.
As I began to glance at the menu, S----- said brightly, "Hey, there's Al Liu."
I snorted.
"No. It's really him."
"Where?" I turned around, still thinking there was a punch line coming.
"At the table near the corner," S----- said, "with that gorgeous Chinese woman."
Well, I didn't get the joke, and besides after all that time walking around, I was feeling pretty hungry.
"I'm going over to say Hello," S----- said.
"Oh no, S-----," I said as it dawned on me that she might be serious. "Don't you remember what everybody says?!" I know they didn't all look alike, but still...
"I'll just go say Hi," she said and made her way forward.
I buried my head in the menu, already embarrassed. How could she fall for that?
She didn't come back right away, and I relaxed a little. She must have thought better of it and gone on to look for the restroom. That would be a good cover.
Then, over my shoulder came S-----'s voice: "'Byron'?" and as I turned, "I'd like you to meet Al Liu!"
5
Yes, it was indeed her college acquaintance. He was an architect now. In fact, it turned out he didn't live in New York but was only there for a short visit... because he actually lived in D. C.!
And the pretty woman with him was his girlfriend, the reigning "Miss Chinatown."
... And if it had been me, I would not have gone over to say Hello.
***
Friday, December 24, 2010
Story: Destiny or Just Dumb Luck?
***
1
The day after Richard Nixon was elected President, I started looking for a job abroad. I was committed through the next summer, 1969, but I thought it was time to go as soon as I could. I told myself it was likely to be a permanent emigration.
Sure enough, in early September, there I was in New York City, climbing aboard a somewhat worn Atlantic cruiser, headed for my new job in south-central France. There was no one to see me off, so I was lost in a quiet reverie as I walked up the gangplank. It was about noon. I hadn't thought about lunch.
"Welcome aboard, sir," the Purser said as I reached the top of the gangplank. I showed him my passport, and he told me my cabin number and showed me on a little diagram how to find it. It turned out to be on E deck (down under water, the least expensive way to travel). He added that the first seating for "luncheon" was scheduled for directly after we steamed past the Statue of Liberty. That was my "seating."
I dumped my hand baggage - a little grip or valise - in the cabin. There was no one else around at the time, but there were three other empty berths. I went right back up to the part of the ship the Purser had recommended for the best view of the Statue of Liberty. One couldn't miss that, could he? The deck wasn't too crowded, so I was able to move right up to the rail. The view at that time was of the pier and the busyness of freeing up the big ship to take off... not to mention the skyline of the lower half of Manhattan. This was all pretty heady stuff, even for a grizzled 28-year-old like me. Was I an adult yet?
After twenty minutes or so, as we sailed by that iconic monument, I was still lost in my own thoughts. I was thinking I was probably the only one on that deck who was saying to myself how ironic it was for us to be admiring this mighty symbol of all the best about America - about the United States - at a time when the country itself was going to the dogs.
So I looked around at the others. Standing next to me at the rail was a smart-looking young woman in a neat, khaki trench coat. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts too, and our eyes did not meet. But when I went down to the dining room a half-hour later, it turned out that all the single young people on board had been seated together... and she ended up next to me. Her name was Teri.
2
Two weeks later, I was sitting in an out-of-the-way staircase in the basement of American Express in Paris. I was hot, tired, hungry, and most of all frustrated. What I should do next? I wondered.
After arriving early that morning at the Gare de Lyon, Paris's station for trains from the south, I had taken the Metro to the modest little street in the student district, la Rue de Rennes, where I'd told Teri I remembered from my JYA in Paris a whole row of decent but moderately priced hotels. Since I hadn't heard from Teri in the week I'd spent in my new home city, I just started looking for her at the first hotel on the left side of the street, coming from the Metro.
At each of the eight little hotels, I explained I was looking a friend. Everyone was most cooperative, but no one had seen Teri. Most did have rooms available.
It was a warm mid-September day. My little grip felt heavier every time I left each hotel. When Teri was nowhere to be found... "I know she said the 20th," I said to myself, "That's today."
"Something must have happened."
It dawned on me that, wherever she was staying, maybe Teri might have read in her little guidebook that the American Express office over near the Opera across town had a message service where you could find or leave messages. I got back on the subway and headed over there.
The basement was crowded and stuffy. As I waited in the particular line for the names in the alphabet that included my own, I jotted a note on a little scrap of paper I ripped from a tiny notebook in my shirt pocket. "Where are you staying?" I wrote. "It's almost 1 p.m. now, on Thursday. I'll check back here to see if you have left me a message at 4 today and at 10 tomorrow morning. Ron."
There was no message. Teri's last name started with a different letter from mine the line for which was down the counter a station or two. But the young woman who waited on me was nice enough to take my little note down to her colleague at the right spot. I thanked her and looked around for a place where I could observe the crowd for a while, and rest my legs, and cool off, and figure out my next step. Along the wall behind us, there was a little staircase going to an office door.
I flopped down there, nearly out of hope, wondering again if I could have screwed up somehow... when Teri walked in!
3
"Well, I never thought you would actually come!" Teri said a little later while we had a sandwich at the grand Cafe de la Paix next door. "I know how it is."
"So, on the ship when we talked about getting back together in Paris... You didn't think I meant it?" I found that hard to believe, but I laughed gaily.
"Oh, you meant it at the time," she said, laughing in her turn. We were both happy to be together again, after all. "But you get to a new place, start getting settled..." She shrugged. "I didn't think much about it."
I'd been thinking of little else, myself, but why mention that? I was telling myself she'd been thinking it was too good to be true... so she just went on with her vacation. When I'd had to get off in Le Havre while she went on to England, that was it, for her. The five days on the ship had been fun... but life goes on.
When she arrived at the Paris train station last night, right there in front of her she saw a tourist office with signs - in English and other languages - saying they could find a hotel for her. That seemed too great to pass up. They had respected her expense limits, the hotel was nice, that was that.
She'd been to Versailles on a tour that morning, and on returning, the bus made a stop at American Express. On a whim she got off.
And there I was!
4
Teri's original plan was to spend three days in Paris and then move on to Geneva for three days, before ending her four-week vacation in Italy. I toyed with the idea of going to Geneva too, but I wasn't exactly sure when I was expected at my new job. We ended up staying four days in Paris, when Teri headed off to Geneva for only two days, and I went back to the one-room apartment I'd rented in my new home city.
We'd exchanged addresses, of course. I fretted over how long I should wait to send my first letter so that it would just get to Wisconsin in time to meet her coming back from Europe. It was after all a good thing I'd checked in at work, since my French employers had been a little anxious I might not show up, but the work itself did not actually begin right away, so I could concentrate on finding a grocery store, a self-serve laundry, the nearest Post Office, and start a local bank account. That all took about a day...
I took long walks down by the beautiful, wide river that flowed right through the center of town. Like Teri's and my time in Paris, it was sunny and warm. But I was busy wondering where in Italy Teri would be each day and what I should say in that important first letter. I had the lightweight blue, special "air letter" paper unfolded on my little desk under my only window, but I didn't want to write until the day I would send the letter off.
5
When I hadn't heard anything from Teri two full weeks after she would have returned to Wisconsin, I was getting impatient. I sent her a cheery airmail post card: "How was your return trip? How's everything going? I've started on the new job. A few surprises. Nothing bad! Please let me know you're okay... OK? Ron."
First-class mail to the U. S. was supposed to take about three days, maybe four, so I thought a reply could come in ten days, two weeks...
When a full month had passed, with no mail from Teri, I was sure I must have had the wrong address. But there it was, in her own hand-writing, on the page I'd torn from my little notebook ... What could I make of that?
To be honest, it never occurred to me that maybe Teri had just been stringing me along. Maybe it was good to have a companion going from one tourist attraction to another - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral... - but a long-term friendship may have been another thing altogether? No, I didn't think of that, frankly. Maybe she was sick? It was more than impatience I was feeling by then (but less than self-doubt, I guess).
6
"The gentleman would wish to send a cable to the United States?" the postal manager asked me politely.
"Yes, if you please, sir," I replied, equally politely and correctly. This was the second person I had spoken to in the nearest Post Office to my apartment. I realized that my upset must have been obvious to them from my manner, the strain in my voice, and the expression on my face. But I could tell it myself mainly in my uncharacteristically bad French accent. I was thinking of what I would say to Teri so much that it seemed to be hard to switch to French. To myself I sounded like an American trying to speak good French, rather than - my usual pose - a European raised in France speaking his native tongue.
I was upset because another two weeks had passed with no word from Wisconsin. When the morning mail that day - about 9 a.m. - had brought nothing from Teri, I walked straight from the mailboxes near the front door of the building, outside and to the left across the square, and down the two blocks to the Poste.
A pleasant young woman seemed concerned that I - evidently - was feeling an emergency, when she responded to my inquiry about sending a cable, "Yes, sir. One moment, if you please."
Then she had returned with the man, who I presumed was her supervisor. "You know the precise postal address in the U. S.?" he asked as he sorted through papers behind the counter.
"Yes, sir."
"Please write the name and address here and your message here," he said, pointing.
"In English?" I asked.
"But yes, monsieur," he replied in a reassuring tone. "No one will know what you write." And he smiled and nodded.
I wrote: "Teri: I have written you twice but had no reply. Please cable if you are well. Ron." I had edited the message down - saying "twice" instead of "a couple of times," for instance - in order to reduce the number of words. I didn't know how much this was going to cost.
It seemed like a bargain, after all, when I paid.
7
Then, it seemed like in no time (since everything really is relative), a letter from Teri came. It was not effusive, but friendly.
"I had been meaning to write sooner. There was no reason for you to worry.
"Things have been busy here. I am moving to a new apartment with my friend Joanie. I must have mentioned her. It is much nearer my work in Milwaukee. Joanie is a teacher.
"Have you made many friends? I'll bet you have been busy too. I hope the job really is going well. What were the surprises anyway?"
That was the tone, more or less like our conversations on the ship and in Paris. I was still puzzled about the long delay, but I relaxed... and enjoyed the long-range conversation.
I wrote back that day, and in a couple of weeks there was another letter from her. And a pleasant sort of rhythm set in. I never found out if she replied to my letters on the very day when they arrived. Probably not, but they came pretty soon. Once in a while, we got out of sync and letters crossed in the air mail.
After a while, she actually sent me something I had never seen before, a little camera that you could only use one time before sending it all in to be developed. "Use it to take some pictures of your apartment," Teri had written. "I want to see what it's like. Take a lot. There's no reason to waste any."
Before I had my friends at the Poste send it back, with customs stamps and everything, I photographed about every square inch of the apartment. I stopped short of snapping the primitive toilet and the cramped shower down the hall.
8
In February, Teri had another vacation coming. She and another high school friend had found out that the cheapest way to travel was to sign up for a ski trip. The first stop was on the French side of the Alps, not far from where I lived. She came to see me before joining the group with her friend Kate. Then we both went to Chamonix and then on to Grindelwald, Switzerland.
This time she wasn't surprised when I met her at the train station.
When I finished work that summer, I went to Wisconsin. We got married. We did return to France, where I had another one-year job.
But then, we came home... just about 40 years ago.
***
1
The day after Richard Nixon was elected President, I started looking for a job abroad. I was committed through the next summer, 1969, but I thought it was time to go as soon as I could. I told myself it was likely to be a permanent emigration.
Sure enough, in early September, there I was in New York City, climbing aboard a somewhat worn Atlantic cruiser, headed for my new job in south-central France. There was no one to see me off, so I was lost in a quiet reverie as I walked up the gangplank. It was about noon. I hadn't thought about lunch.
"Welcome aboard, sir," the Purser said as I reached the top of the gangplank. I showed him my passport, and he told me my cabin number and showed me on a little diagram how to find it. It turned out to be on E deck (down under water, the least expensive way to travel). He added that the first seating for "luncheon" was scheduled for directly after we steamed past the Statue of Liberty. That was my "seating."
I dumped my hand baggage - a little grip or valise - in the cabin. There was no one else around at the time, but there were three other empty berths. I went right back up to the part of the ship the Purser had recommended for the best view of the Statue of Liberty. One couldn't miss that, could he? The deck wasn't too crowded, so I was able to move right up to the rail. The view at that time was of the pier and the busyness of freeing up the big ship to take off... not to mention the skyline of the lower half of Manhattan. This was all pretty heady stuff, even for a grizzled 28-year-old like me. Was I an adult yet?
After twenty minutes or so, as we sailed by that iconic monument, I was still lost in my own thoughts. I was thinking I was probably the only one on that deck who was saying to myself how ironic it was for us to be admiring this mighty symbol of all the best about America - about the United States - at a time when the country itself was going to the dogs.
So I looked around at the others. Standing next to me at the rail was a smart-looking young woman in a neat, khaki trench coat. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts too, and our eyes did not meet. But when I went down to the dining room a half-hour later, it turned out that all the single young people on board had been seated together... and she ended up next to me. Her name was Teri.
2
Two weeks later, I was sitting in an out-of-the-way staircase in the basement of American Express in Paris. I was hot, tired, hungry, and most of all frustrated. What I should do next? I wondered.
After arriving early that morning at the Gare de Lyon, Paris's station for trains from the south, I had taken the Metro to the modest little street in the student district, la Rue de Rennes, where I'd told Teri I remembered from my JYA in Paris a whole row of decent but moderately priced hotels. Since I hadn't heard from Teri in the week I'd spent in my new home city, I just started looking for her at the first hotel on the left side of the street, coming from the Metro.
At each of the eight little hotels, I explained I was looking a friend. Everyone was most cooperative, but no one had seen Teri. Most did have rooms available.
It was a warm mid-September day. My little grip felt heavier every time I left each hotel. When Teri was nowhere to be found... "I know she said the 20th," I said to myself, "That's today."
"Something must have happened."
It dawned on me that, wherever she was staying, maybe Teri might have read in her little guidebook that the American Express office over near the Opera across town had a message service where you could find or leave messages. I got back on the subway and headed over there.
The basement was crowded and stuffy. As I waited in the particular line for the names in the alphabet that included my own, I jotted a note on a little scrap of paper I ripped from a tiny notebook in my shirt pocket. "Where are you staying?" I wrote. "It's almost 1 p.m. now, on Thursday. I'll check back here to see if you have left me a message at 4 today and at 10 tomorrow morning. Ron."
There was no message. Teri's last name started with a different letter from mine the line for which was down the counter a station or two. But the young woman who waited on me was nice enough to take my little note down to her colleague at the right spot. I thanked her and looked around for a place where I could observe the crowd for a while, and rest my legs, and cool off, and figure out my next step. Along the wall behind us, there was a little staircase going to an office door.
I flopped down there, nearly out of hope, wondering again if I could have screwed up somehow... when Teri walked in!
3
"Well, I never thought you would actually come!" Teri said a little later while we had a sandwich at the grand Cafe de la Paix next door. "I know how it is."
"So, on the ship when we talked about getting back together in Paris... You didn't think I meant it?" I found that hard to believe, but I laughed gaily.
"Oh, you meant it at the time," she said, laughing in her turn. We were both happy to be together again, after all. "But you get to a new place, start getting settled..." She shrugged. "I didn't think much about it."
I'd been thinking of little else, myself, but why mention that? I was telling myself she'd been thinking it was too good to be true... so she just went on with her vacation. When I'd had to get off in Le Havre while she went on to England, that was it, for her. The five days on the ship had been fun... but life goes on.
When she arrived at the Paris train station last night, right there in front of her she saw a tourist office with signs - in English and other languages - saying they could find a hotel for her. That seemed too great to pass up. They had respected her expense limits, the hotel was nice, that was that.
She'd been to Versailles on a tour that morning, and on returning, the bus made a stop at American Express. On a whim she got off.
And there I was!
4
Teri's original plan was to spend three days in Paris and then move on to Geneva for three days, before ending her four-week vacation in Italy. I toyed with the idea of going to Geneva too, but I wasn't exactly sure when I was expected at my new job. We ended up staying four days in Paris, when Teri headed off to Geneva for only two days, and I went back to the one-room apartment I'd rented in my new home city.
We'd exchanged addresses, of course. I fretted over how long I should wait to send my first letter so that it would just get to Wisconsin in time to meet her coming back from Europe. It was after all a good thing I'd checked in at work, since my French employers had been a little anxious I might not show up, but the work itself did not actually begin right away, so I could concentrate on finding a grocery store, a self-serve laundry, the nearest Post Office, and start a local bank account. That all took about a day...
I took long walks down by the beautiful, wide river that flowed right through the center of town. Like Teri's and my time in Paris, it was sunny and warm. But I was busy wondering where in Italy Teri would be each day and what I should say in that important first letter. I had the lightweight blue, special "air letter" paper unfolded on my little desk under my only window, but I didn't want to write until the day I would send the letter off.
5
When I hadn't heard anything from Teri two full weeks after she would have returned to Wisconsin, I was getting impatient. I sent her a cheery airmail post card: "How was your return trip? How's everything going? I've started on the new job. A few surprises. Nothing bad! Please let me know you're okay... OK? Ron."
First-class mail to the U. S. was supposed to take about three days, maybe four, so I thought a reply could come in ten days, two weeks...
When a full month had passed, with no mail from Teri, I was sure I must have had the wrong address. But there it was, in her own hand-writing, on the page I'd torn from my little notebook ... What could I make of that?
To be honest, it never occurred to me that maybe Teri had just been stringing me along. Maybe it was good to have a companion going from one tourist attraction to another - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral... - but a long-term friendship may have been another thing altogether? No, I didn't think of that, frankly. Maybe she was sick? It was more than impatience I was feeling by then (but less than self-doubt, I guess).
6
"The gentleman would wish to send a cable to the United States?" the postal manager asked me politely.
"Yes, if you please, sir," I replied, equally politely and correctly. This was the second person I had spoken to in the nearest Post Office to my apartment. I realized that my upset must have been obvious to them from my manner, the strain in my voice, and the expression on my face. But I could tell it myself mainly in my uncharacteristically bad French accent. I was thinking of what I would say to Teri so much that it seemed to be hard to switch to French. To myself I sounded like an American trying to speak good French, rather than - my usual pose - a European raised in France speaking his native tongue.
I was upset because another two weeks had passed with no word from Wisconsin. When the morning mail that day - about 9 a.m. - had brought nothing from Teri, I walked straight from the mailboxes near the front door of the building, outside and to the left across the square, and down the two blocks to the Poste.
A pleasant young woman seemed concerned that I - evidently - was feeling an emergency, when she responded to my inquiry about sending a cable, "Yes, sir. One moment, if you please."
Then she had returned with the man, who I presumed was her supervisor. "You know the precise postal address in the U. S.?" he asked as he sorted through papers behind the counter.
"Yes, sir."
"Please write the name and address here and your message here," he said, pointing.
"In English?" I asked.
"But yes, monsieur," he replied in a reassuring tone. "No one will know what you write." And he smiled and nodded.
I wrote: "Teri: I have written you twice but had no reply. Please cable if you are well. Ron." I had edited the message down - saying "twice" instead of "a couple of times," for instance - in order to reduce the number of words. I didn't know how much this was going to cost.
It seemed like a bargain, after all, when I paid.
7
Then, it seemed like in no time (since everything really is relative), a letter from Teri came. It was not effusive, but friendly.
"I had been meaning to write sooner. There was no reason for you to worry.
"Things have been busy here. I am moving to a new apartment with my friend Joanie. I must have mentioned her. It is much nearer my work in Milwaukee. Joanie is a teacher.
"Have you made many friends? I'll bet you have been busy too. I hope the job really is going well. What were the surprises anyway?"
That was the tone, more or less like our conversations on the ship and in Paris. I was still puzzled about the long delay, but I relaxed... and enjoyed the long-range conversation.
I wrote back that day, and in a couple of weeks there was another letter from her. And a pleasant sort of rhythm set in. I never found out if she replied to my letters on the very day when they arrived. Probably not, but they came pretty soon. Once in a while, we got out of sync and letters crossed in the air mail.
After a while, she actually sent me something I had never seen before, a little camera that you could only use one time before sending it all in to be developed. "Use it to take some pictures of your apartment," Teri had written. "I want to see what it's like. Take a lot. There's no reason to waste any."
Before I had my friends at the Poste send it back, with customs stamps and everything, I photographed about every square inch of the apartment. I stopped short of snapping the primitive toilet and the cramped shower down the hall.
8
In February, Teri had another vacation coming. She and another high school friend had found out that the cheapest way to travel was to sign up for a ski trip. The first stop was on the French side of the Alps, not far from where I lived. She came to see me before joining the group with her friend Kate. Then we both went to Chamonix and then on to Grindelwald, Switzerland.
This time she wasn't surprised when I met her at the train station.
When I finished work that summer, I went to Wisconsin. We got married. We did return to France, where I had another one-year job.
But then, we came home... just about 40 years ago.
***
Friday, December 17, 2010
Corporations Are Not People, Are They? (essay)
***
Do you find it difficult to distinguish business corporations from human beings? It seems hard to believe, but apparently some do. Let us think about this...
The American Declaration of Independence says,
Do you find it difficult to distinguish business corporations from human beings? It seems hard to believe, but apparently some do. Let us think about this...
The American Declaration of Independence says,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
1
The first truth self-evident to our forefathers was "that all men are created equal." Today, we would expect them to say something like "all people" instead of "all men." Did these men mean to exclude people of color (like slaves) - as sub-human - and women - as insignificant in public affairs? Did even Thomas Jefferson mean to do that? Probably, they did. Yes.
To be sure, slave-owners could feel affection, even love, for some of their slaves, but that kind of affection was to them more like their sympathy for their trusted animals than like their feeling toward other human beings. Yes, our forefathers - like John Adams - could "remember" and respect "the ladies," but they surely thought that public affairs (especially war, which they were at that time promoting) was a realm for men only.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the supreme law of our land, the U. S. Constitution, puts to right one part of this central sentence in the Declaration by stating:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
American slaves had already been emancipated when this amendment was ratified, so when it was, ex-slaves and other men of color were hereby ordered to be treated like everyone else.
Later, the Nineteenth Amendment set straight the second part of the Declaration's central sentence by saying:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Women may not be prevented from voting, because they are citizens. Women, like men of color, will be treated like everyone else. So, whatever our forefathers may have intended by saying, "All men are created equal," we have known since 1920 that both all men and all women are equal under U. S. law.
Thus, today we would read the Declaration's central sentence as though it said, "All human individuals ( or 'All people') are created equal, [and] ...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." And, of course, other rights - many of them addressed in the first eight amendments to the Constitution - are not innate but are granted to all citizens, not by the Creator but by the laws adopted by legislatures.
2
Business corporations are not "human individuals"; they are not "people." That truth must be as "evident" as those truths referred to in the Declaration. So, whatever "rights" corporations may have, they are not endowed in them by a divine Creator. Corporations' rights are granted by law (if indeed corporations may be properly said to "have rights" at all).
Nor are corporations, of course, citizens. No one has ever suggested that corporations should be allowed to vote, for instance.
Now, as we know, the first amendments of the Constitution, or the "Bill of Rights," confer fundamental rights on U. S. citizens. These include:
Now, as we know, the first amendments of the Constitution, or the "Bill of Rights," confer fundamental rights on U. S. citizens. These include:
the right to follow any religion of one's choice
the right to speak one's mind without danger of legal punishment
the right of the press to do the same
the people's right to meet
the right to petition the government for redress of a grievance
the right to own firearms (reference is made to the need for militias)
the right to say No to an order to house soldiers in your home
and
in amendments 6, 7, and 8, a significant number of rights related to allegations of crime: such as the right to be tried by a jury of one's peers, the right not to have your privacy invaded by government officers unless ordered to do so by a court, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a speedy trial, and so on.
These rights are granted to citizens by the U. S. Constitution. Additional rights may be granted by federal laws, such as patent laws or laws relating to interstate commerce, or so long as they do not conflict with federal law, by specific states' laws, such as the right to marry or to operate a school.
3
Corporations come into existence for a wide variety of reasons, but they would not exist if they did not have some legal rights, implied if not expressly stated. All corporations may enter into contracts, for instance, such as renting or owning a building, and they are legally bound to fulfill the obligations they take on through contracts. A corporation may own property, of course, and it would be against the law for anyone - even government officials - to take their property without paying just compensation. Corporations may incur debt, in fact would often not exist without this privilege, and they are held responsible for their debts. Corporations are liable to be be taxed, and they may be sued (for illegal discrimination against employees or customers, for example). Finally, like people corporations can be punished for breaking the law, such as by committing fraud, breaking a contract, or even manslaughter.
These corporate privileges and responsibilities are all necessary if corporations are to exist at all, and all of these particular privileges are also rights and responsibilities of human individuals.
Perhaps because these fundamental "rights" adhere both to people and to corporations, corporations are sometimes and in some ways considered "legal persons," even though they are not human beings, as the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court famously wrote of corporations:
“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”
Corporate charters are granted by states. Whether explicitly stated or not, some of the essential corporate rights - such as the provisions pertaining to contracts and to property, corporations' being subject to criminal law and to taxation, and their being guaranteed due process of law - are also guaranteed to citizens, that is to human individuals, by the Constitution.
On the other hand, of course, as one might assume, the Constitution also grants rights to human citizens - such as the right to vote - which are not granted to corporations.
4
So, not all of the rights granted to citizens are granted to corporations. The Constitution says that "the people" elect representatives to serve in the government; it does not say "legal persons" elect representatives, nor of course does it say that corporations should do so. Some rights granted to citizens, in other words, are explicitly granted to human individuals exclusively, such as the right to keep and bear arms:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. [emphasis added]
Keeping arms is "the right of the people" (not of legal persons). "Thank goodness," we might say: imagine entering a corporate headquarters - a high rise, say, on Sixth Avenue in New York - and seeing everyone carrying a sidearm and finding the word "Armory" over a large steel door in the back, flanked by men with AK-47s!
Other provisions of rights in the Constitution, on the other hand, are stated in the passive voice, leaving it unclear whether these rights are granted exclusively to human individuals or also to "legal persons."
This is the case with what we call the right of free speech:
Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech... .
Although it may seen clear to many of us that only human individuals can literally speak, this section of the first amendment does not say explicitly whose speech may not be "abridged," as the following phrase later in the same amendment does:
Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]
State legislatures or the President and the houses of the federal government are not prohibited by the Constitution (or anything else) from passing laws saying explicitly that certain "legal persons" do not have this right.
So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals. Or is common sense no longer useful to the common good?
***
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Childhood Treats, etc.
***
1
It is clear to me now, looking back, that I was an odd child... and I liked it that way!
If just about everybody I knew preferred one thing, I said (having first convinced myself) that I preferred something else. This peculiar effort to seem "special" extended to almost everything. When just about all the boys I knew, for instance, were especially looking forward to the next Hopalong Cassidy comic, I focused all my attention on waiting for the next Red Ryder. On Sundays, a bunch of us used to take the half-hour or so between Sunday School and Church to make a quick trip to a drug store two blocks away for a "cold drink" (as we called a soda); when the fad was for everyone to order a cherry coke at the soda fountain, I had a vanilla coke instead. And later, when everyone was using ballpoint pens, I always used the equally-new ink cartridge fountain pens.
But, as for candy: when we went to the movies - which cost at that time 7 cents for each child - of course a few of us would get a box of popcorn, but as I recall it now, most seemed to prefer candy. Milk Duds were the most popular, as I think back, with Junior Mints as a back-up. Some would get Dots, and everyone who did gave their licorice Dots to me (since no one else would eat licorice). I think it was later when M & Ms showed up, to great acclaim...
But as for me, I always bought... Bit-O-Honey.
I know I did that because no one else I knew would eat Bit-O-Honey at all. It wasn't just that I wanted it all to myself either; I sincerely tried to convince the others they should share in my delight. No, the real reason was I had to be different, didn't I?
At a candy counter, if someone bought a Baby-Ruth, I pointed out that I preferred Oh Henry but they were harder to find where we lived in the depths of Texas. Get the point?
2
But my fondest memories of all those thoughts of childhood candy are focused on the one summer before junior high when almost everyday, I went with one friend of mine - a guy nick-named by his parents Dos in order to avoid calling him "Junior" - to the best swimming pool in town, one of the few that opened at 9 a.m. seven days a week even though many days we were the only ones there at that time besides the lifeguards. Our Moms took turns driving us out to the pool around 10 and then picking us up at 11:30 or so in order for us to be home in time for lunch.
Ordinarily, especially in a public venue, both Dos and I were rather inhibited. But something in that cold spring water seemed to liberate us, and every day we did cannonballs off the diving board, or tried flips (and sometimes flops) and other silly plunges and splashes, howling and cheering all the way. What must have those cool, handsome, tanned and well-muscled, 16-year-old lifeguards have thought of us two lunatics?
Anyway, this went on - believe it or not - for over an hour, every day. Ten or fifteen minutes before the designated mother was to pick us up, we would drag our shivering and exhausted selves up the beautiful green hill from the pool to the street level... and stop by the candy-vending machine. Dos introduced me to a special treat: the white chocolate covered Zero bar.
Now, that was perfect! No one I knew (other than Dos, of course) had even noticed the Zero bar before. I had one most days, although I would sometimes vary the series with another unusual choice, which I introduced to Dos (who was unimpressed): the Payday bar, covered with peanuts without chocolate.
What's that? No chocolate coating? How could anyone want that? I imagined my friends asking, as I crunched my Payday, waiting for one of our mothers.
3
Some kids liked the straightforward milk chocolate Hershey Bar; I didn't particularly. Others wanted Snickers or either Almond Joy or Mounds; I liked the flat, semi-sweet chocolate Mars bar. Some liked Milky Way; I preferred Three Musketeers.
I mentioned earlier that when someone expressed a preference for Baby Ruths, I claimed to prefer the Oh Henry bar. That one I confess I knew was not true, but the contrarian habit on these delectable matters was too strong to break, apparently.
I had an interesting experience with Oh Henry many years later in France.
I had met an eminent French university professor, who for some reason seemed to have taken a liking to me. M. W----- was a well-known French scholar of modern American literature, and maybe he enjoyed hearing Americans talk as part of his cultural education.
Well, one day M. W----- called and asked me to drop by his office at the university. It seemed to suit his imposing position that he sat on his side of the wide dark wood desk in a big cushioned arm chair while his visitor was left to perch uncomfortably on the edge of a little light-colored straight chair. On this occasion, he gestured that I should lean forward so he could show me the papers he was working on.
It turns out that M. W----- was working on a translation of Cane, which I learned was a novel written in the 1920's by a Harlem Renaissance figure named Jean Toomer. M. W----- asked me to read a particular paragraph, which was about a kid walking along a littered railroad track, apparently in an urban area. Describing the trash stirring around in the breeze, Toomer mentioned an old Oh Henry wrapper.
M. W-----, naturally, knew O. Henry as a popular writer of short stories, like "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room." What an O. Henry wrapper could be, he just couldn't figure out. I believe he was embarrassed to ask me, but of course he couldn't translate what he did not understand.
It actually took me a minute or two before I had figured out the somewhat elliptical syntax. Then I explained to M. W----- what an Oh Henry candy bar was. (No, he didn't say he preferred Baby Ruth!) Once he got it, by the way, he quickly changed the subject, and speaking in English, he asked: "And what in the world is 'near beer'?" Even though M. W----- was a known connoisseur of wine, not beer like those Germans, he was still offended to think that Prohibition had made Americans reduce the natural alcohol content in any drink.
5
When folks visited Mother or Dad at home when I was young, they would be welcomed into the living-room and offered a "cold drink." At a soda counter, that meant what we now call a soda. But in a private home, it might mean iced tea (which we called "ice tea" as though it were frozen) or even iced water. In the home refrigerator when I was growing up, there was usually a six-bottle carton of Dr. Pepper or now and then RC Cola, and sometimes when I was being pampered there would be my own choice, Orange Crush.
It was always hot enough to make us thirsty two or three times during the day. At most once a day, maybe after supper, we could have a cola or an Orange Crush. But most of the time, we just grabbed for the flat-sided bottle Mother always kept full of iced water. Sometimes there was also a pitcher of ice tea, but we had to ask before swilling any of it down; it took a long time to brew up some tea and then cool it down to the right sipping or gulping temperature. We often had milk at meals, and iced water was always available.
Once in a great while, Dad would be a little later than usual arriving for lunch. That would be because he had stopped at a stand along his usual route to and from work to pick up some hamburgers for us. It was a local chain that he preferred (as all of us did). There must have been five or six scattered around the town. There just weren't any national chain restaurants in my hometown, especially not for just hamburgers. And these places weren't really restaurants either. You went up to a little window and told the man or woman what you wanted, and after a few minutes, a brown paper bag would come out the window, and you paid and went away. There was no indoor seating, only - sometimes - one or two wooden picnic tables jammed up against the outside wall of the stand. The best one, where Dad stopped on the way home, was called Somewhere, serving Someburgers.
A hamburger anywhere in my hometown included lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise, and - unless you said otherwise - a big slice of onion. The Someburger was a little bigger than the average and had more pepper on it than most. Boy, would I like one now.
Were these fast-food stands? Well, you didn't have to wait very long, I guess. But the kind of stand that served real cheap little patties on buns with ketchup, mustard, and pickle (onions? I guess so, chopped up real fine) did not appear at home until I was about ready to graduate from high school, and that place too was entirely local and was called 2-K's after the husband wife owners.
My family did not go out to eat very often, except after church on Sundays. Then, we would usually go to this particular coffee-shop like, sit-down restaurant that was famous for its home-cooked fried chicken. They always served biscuits and clover honey from Waxahachie, Texas, 100 miles or more to the north.
There was no pretending I preferred anything besides these family favorites, but on really hot nights when Dad would take us to that special (local) place where you could get an ice cream cone right in your car, when everybody else had chocolate or strawberry, or maybe peach, I would always get lime sherbet.
6
And then, what about the over-the-counter medicines we always seemed to have around?
My parents seemed to get what they called "sinus headaches" often. They always had aspirin around, particularly Bayer in the little tins or St. Joseph in the same-sized cardboard containers. But the pain-reliever of choice in the Derrick household became, and stayed, Anacin. For years the ads for Anacin stressed that Anacin had two, not one but two active ingredients. I don't think we figured it out that taking a regular aspirin and drinking a cup of coffee would have the same result, since the special ingredient was caffeine. (It worked too.)
My Mother always liked to have diet control handy. I don't think I ever chewed on an Ayds, as advertised by Arthur Godfrey (between Lipton tea ads), but that became another standard in our house. Vaseline, of course, was always on hand. For those skinned knees and other little scrapes, Mercurachrome was always around, since we didn't know at that time that mercury posed a health threat. I also remember once in a while Dad's applying a bright purple fluid to splits in the skin between his toes (a typical problem in hot, humid climates).
We must have had cough drops around too, but I don't remember the favorites. I did have a memorable experience in high school, though. I had gone all the way through junior high with this one big guy. He was a starting lineman on the football team, which by our junior year in high school (in Texas) was a big deal. He was generally considered a nice person, but I didn't know him well and was a little intimidated by him.
Well, we had one class together, probably the required Texas History. R--- sat right in front of me, so that the size of that huge frame was obvious to me all the time. One day during class I had one of those nagging coughs. I just couldn't get it under control. After 15 or 20 minutes, when our teacher turned around to the chalkboard, R--- turned around to me and said, "These things really work" as he handed over a little box of something I'd never seen before: Throat Disks.
I didn't hesitate to pop one of these flat, little brown disks into my mouth, but immediately wondered if I'd made a mistake. Could Mr. Nice-Guy R--- be playing a little trick on me? The Throat Disk had a sharp odor and taste that moved right up my nose. (I knew years later that one of the active ingredients was chloroform!) The taste itself was kind of good, but utterly new. Was I going to be the laughing stock of school by the end of that hour?
Before I got through wondering if I had been tricked, though, the cough was gone. And it didn't come back. R--- started moving to the door after class, but I got to him, thanked him, and noted that the Throat Disks had stopped my cough once and for all. He just treated this whole thing as just normal, it would seem.
7
Unguentine, remember that? In our house we usually had some around in case of little burns... What caused burns? I don't remember, but we had some; I remember that. I also don't remember why we sometimes had Absorbine Junior on hand. Campho-Phenique was always in the medicine cabinet, primarily to treat my many fever blisters. Benedryl was the typical prescription medicine to address my perpetual allergy problems.
And... oh, I hate to remember it. Mother kept in the refrigerator a little bottle of Cod Liver Oil; what was that for anyway? We kids did hate to take that stuff.
It's surprising to discover now that looking back on all of those things - the smelly or foul-tasting medicines right along with the burgers, soft drinks, and candy - is all equally pleasant.
And oh, by the way, when there was the big argument among my friends about which was better, Spearmint or Doublemint? My own choice of chewing gum ... was Clove.
***
1
It is clear to me now, looking back, that I was an odd child... and I liked it that way!
If just about everybody I knew preferred one thing, I said (having first convinced myself) that I preferred something else. This peculiar effort to seem "special" extended to almost everything. When just about all the boys I knew, for instance, were especially looking forward to the next Hopalong Cassidy comic, I focused all my attention on waiting for the next Red Ryder. On Sundays, a bunch of us used to take the half-hour or so between Sunday School and Church to make a quick trip to a drug store two blocks away for a "cold drink" (as we called a soda); when the fad was for everyone to order a cherry coke at the soda fountain, I had a vanilla coke instead. And later, when everyone was using ballpoint pens, I always used the equally-new ink cartridge fountain pens.
But, as for candy: when we went to the movies - which cost at that time 7 cents for each child - of course a few of us would get a box of popcorn, but as I recall it now, most seemed to prefer candy. Milk Duds were the most popular, as I think back, with Junior Mints as a back-up. Some would get Dots, and everyone who did gave their licorice Dots to me (since no one else would eat licorice). I think it was later when M & Ms showed up, to great acclaim...
But as for me, I always bought... Bit-O-Honey.
I know I did that because no one else I knew would eat Bit-O-Honey at all. It wasn't just that I wanted it all to myself either; I sincerely tried to convince the others they should share in my delight. No, the real reason was I had to be different, didn't I?
At a candy counter, if someone bought a Baby-Ruth, I pointed out that I preferred Oh Henry but they were harder to find where we lived in the depths of Texas. Get the point?
2
But my fondest memories of all those thoughts of childhood candy are focused on the one summer before junior high when almost everyday, I went with one friend of mine - a guy nick-named by his parents Dos in order to avoid calling him "Junior" - to the best swimming pool in town, one of the few that opened at 9 a.m. seven days a week even though many days we were the only ones there at that time besides the lifeguards. Our Moms took turns driving us out to the pool around 10 and then picking us up at 11:30 or so in order for us to be home in time for lunch.
Ordinarily, especially in a public venue, both Dos and I were rather inhibited. But something in that cold spring water seemed to liberate us, and every day we did cannonballs off the diving board, or tried flips (and sometimes flops) and other silly plunges and splashes, howling and cheering all the way. What must have those cool, handsome, tanned and well-muscled, 16-year-old lifeguards have thought of us two lunatics?
Anyway, this went on - believe it or not - for over an hour, every day. Ten or fifteen minutes before the designated mother was to pick us up, we would drag our shivering and exhausted selves up the beautiful green hill from the pool to the street level... and stop by the candy-vending machine. Dos introduced me to a special treat: the white chocolate covered Zero bar.
Now, that was perfect! No one I knew (other than Dos, of course) had even noticed the Zero bar before. I had one most days, although I would sometimes vary the series with another unusual choice, which I introduced to Dos (who was unimpressed): the Payday bar, covered with peanuts without chocolate.
What's that? No chocolate coating? How could anyone want that? I imagined my friends asking, as I crunched my Payday, waiting for one of our mothers.
3
Some kids liked the straightforward milk chocolate Hershey Bar; I didn't particularly. Others wanted Snickers or either Almond Joy or Mounds; I liked the flat, semi-sweet chocolate Mars bar. Some liked Milky Way; I preferred Three Musketeers.
I mentioned earlier that when someone expressed a preference for Baby Ruths, I claimed to prefer the Oh Henry bar. That one I confess I knew was not true, but the contrarian habit on these delectable matters was too strong to break, apparently.
I had an interesting experience with Oh Henry many years later in France.
I had met an eminent French university professor, who for some reason seemed to have taken a liking to me. M. W----- was a well-known French scholar of modern American literature, and maybe he enjoyed hearing Americans talk as part of his cultural education.
Well, one day M. W----- called and asked me to drop by his office at the university. It seemed to suit his imposing position that he sat on his side of the wide dark wood desk in a big cushioned arm chair while his visitor was left to perch uncomfortably on the edge of a little light-colored straight chair. On this occasion, he gestured that I should lean forward so he could show me the papers he was working on.
It turns out that M. W----- was working on a translation of Cane, which I learned was a novel written in the 1920's by a Harlem Renaissance figure named Jean Toomer. M. W----- asked me to read a particular paragraph, which was about a kid walking along a littered railroad track, apparently in an urban area. Describing the trash stirring around in the breeze, Toomer mentioned an old Oh Henry wrapper.
M. W-----, naturally, knew O. Henry as a popular writer of short stories, like "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room." What an O. Henry wrapper could be, he just couldn't figure out. I believe he was embarrassed to ask me, but of course he couldn't translate what he did not understand.
It actually took me a minute or two before I had figured out the somewhat elliptical syntax. Then I explained to M. W----- what an Oh Henry candy bar was. (No, he didn't say he preferred Baby Ruth!) Once he got it, by the way, he quickly changed the subject, and speaking in English, he asked: "And what in the world is 'near beer'?" Even though M. W----- was a known connoisseur of wine, not beer like those Germans, he was still offended to think that Prohibition had made Americans reduce the natural alcohol content in any drink.
5
When folks visited Mother or Dad at home when I was young, they would be welcomed into the living-room and offered a "cold drink." At a soda counter, that meant what we now call a soda. But in a private home, it might mean iced tea (which we called "ice tea" as though it were frozen) or even iced water. In the home refrigerator when I was growing up, there was usually a six-bottle carton of Dr. Pepper or now and then RC Cola, and sometimes when I was being pampered there would be my own choice, Orange Crush.
It was always hot enough to make us thirsty two or three times during the day. At most once a day, maybe after supper, we could have a cola or an Orange Crush. But most of the time, we just grabbed for the flat-sided bottle Mother always kept full of iced water. Sometimes there was also a pitcher of ice tea, but we had to ask before swilling any of it down; it took a long time to brew up some tea and then cool it down to the right sipping or gulping temperature. We often had milk at meals, and iced water was always available.
Once in a great while, Dad would be a little later than usual arriving for lunch. That would be because he had stopped at a stand along his usual route to and from work to pick up some hamburgers for us. It was a local chain that he preferred (as all of us did). There must have been five or six scattered around the town. There just weren't any national chain restaurants in my hometown, especially not for just hamburgers. And these places weren't really restaurants either. You went up to a little window and told the man or woman what you wanted, and after a few minutes, a brown paper bag would come out the window, and you paid and went away. There was no indoor seating, only - sometimes - one or two wooden picnic tables jammed up against the outside wall of the stand. The best one, where Dad stopped on the way home, was called Somewhere, serving Someburgers.
A hamburger anywhere in my hometown included lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise, and - unless you said otherwise - a big slice of onion. The Someburger was a little bigger than the average and had more pepper on it than most. Boy, would I like one now.
Were these fast-food stands? Well, you didn't have to wait very long, I guess. But the kind of stand that served real cheap little patties on buns with ketchup, mustard, and pickle (onions? I guess so, chopped up real fine) did not appear at home until I was about ready to graduate from high school, and that place too was entirely local and was called 2-K's after the husband wife owners.
My family did not go out to eat very often, except after church on Sundays. Then, we would usually go to this particular coffee-shop like, sit-down restaurant that was famous for its home-cooked fried chicken. They always served biscuits and clover honey from Waxahachie, Texas, 100 miles or more to the north.
There was no pretending I preferred anything besides these family favorites, but on really hot nights when Dad would take us to that special (local) place where you could get an ice cream cone right in your car, when everybody else had chocolate or strawberry, or maybe peach, I would always get lime sherbet.
6
And then, what about the over-the-counter medicines we always seemed to have around?
My parents seemed to get what they called "sinus headaches" often. They always had aspirin around, particularly Bayer in the little tins or St. Joseph in the same-sized cardboard containers. But the pain-reliever of choice in the Derrick household became, and stayed, Anacin. For years the ads for Anacin stressed that Anacin had two, not one but two active ingredients. I don't think we figured it out that taking a regular aspirin and drinking a cup of coffee would have the same result, since the special ingredient was caffeine. (It worked too.)
My Mother always liked to have diet control handy. I don't think I ever chewed on an Ayds, as advertised by Arthur Godfrey (between Lipton tea ads), but that became another standard in our house. Vaseline, of course, was always on hand. For those skinned knees and other little scrapes, Mercurachrome was always around, since we didn't know at that time that mercury posed a health threat. I also remember once in a while Dad's applying a bright purple fluid to splits in the skin between his toes (a typical problem in hot, humid climates).
We must have had cough drops around too, but I don't remember the favorites. I did have a memorable experience in high school, though. I had gone all the way through junior high with this one big guy. He was a starting lineman on the football team, which by our junior year in high school (in Texas) was a big deal. He was generally considered a nice person, but I didn't know him well and was a little intimidated by him.
Well, we had one class together, probably the required Texas History. R--- sat right in front of me, so that the size of that huge frame was obvious to me all the time. One day during class I had one of those nagging coughs. I just couldn't get it under control. After 15 or 20 minutes, when our teacher turned around to the chalkboard, R--- turned around to me and said, "These things really work" as he handed over a little box of something I'd never seen before: Throat Disks.
I didn't hesitate to pop one of these flat, little brown disks into my mouth, but immediately wondered if I'd made a mistake. Could Mr. Nice-Guy R--- be playing a little trick on me? The Throat Disk had a sharp odor and taste that moved right up my nose. (I knew years later that one of the active ingredients was chloroform!) The taste itself was kind of good, but utterly new. Was I going to be the laughing stock of school by the end of that hour?
Before I got through wondering if I had been tricked, though, the cough was gone. And it didn't come back. R--- started moving to the door after class, but I got to him, thanked him, and noted that the Throat Disks had stopped my cough once and for all. He just treated this whole thing as just normal, it would seem.
7
Unguentine, remember that? In our house we usually had some around in case of little burns... What caused burns? I don't remember, but we had some; I remember that. I also don't remember why we sometimes had Absorbine Junior on hand. Campho-Phenique was always in the medicine cabinet, primarily to treat my many fever blisters. Benedryl was the typical prescription medicine to address my perpetual allergy problems.
And... oh, I hate to remember it. Mother kept in the refrigerator a little bottle of Cod Liver Oil; what was that for anyway? We kids did hate to take that stuff.
It's surprising to discover now that looking back on all of those things - the smelly or foul-tasting medicines right along with the burgers, soft drinks, and candy - is all equally pleasant.
And oh, by the way, when there was the big argument among my friends about which was better, Spearmint or Doublemint? My own choice of chewing gum ... was Clove.
***
Friday, November 26, 2010
Liberal, Libertarian, Libertine: and Freedom (essay)
***
1. Liberal
In many political and historical discussions, one finds talk of Liberalism. The word liberal, referring to a thing (like a "liberal policy" or a "liberal opinion") or to a person, comes from the Latin word meaning free, just as the word "liberty" comes from the Latin for "freedom." Thus, a liberal policy is a policy growing from an emphasis on freedom, and a liberal person is one who values liberty or freedom.
Since the suffix -ism means a belief in what comes before the -ism, Liberalism means a belief in the high value of freedom. To use the term liberal without understanding this fact is to demonstrate one's ignorance (which of course, we don't like to do).
For more than 400 years, the cultures of the world have been in the process of becoming more and more liberal. Countries have become independent (or "free") of colonial rule by other countries. Individuals have tended to become less imprisoned in the social status of their parents (or "freer" from the strictures of inherited social class). Economies have generally moved in the direction of less government control (shaped more by the "free" market than by the nobility or by tyrants).
When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1781, it achieved all three liberal goals at once. The United States became a free country. Compared to people in most parts of the world, individuals in the 18th-century United States were free to rise in socio-economic status if they had the ability, luck, and drive to do so. And the United States economy had already become more controlled by free market forces than the economies of the rest of the world.
For the United States, from the beginning, was a liberal country, committed to "liberty...for all," as Francis Bellamy later wrote. From what our politicians say, it would appear that we are still committed to "liberty for all" and thus remain a liberal country.
2. Libertarian
A more modern term, a libertarian is a person so committed to freedom of the individual that he or she may advocate no social restraint whatsoever on the individual's behavior. As a result, libertarian principles from the 19th century have been compared with those of anarchism, a belief in the value of a state in which no one is ruled by any group or by any other individual. No one, it would seem, could oppose tyranny or a ruling class more than a libertarian.
Libertarianism is, therefore, an extreme form of liberalism. In other words, a libertarian is a liberal who prefers complete freedom from any form or degree at all of social order.
3. Libertine
A libertine, which is usually a term of contempt, feels "free" of moral restraints. A libertine pursues a life of gratification of every whim, free of conscience when his or her actions cause others pain or when they exceed normal social or moral standards. A libertine feels free of tradition, free of social considerations, free of moral or ethical standards, free of consideration of others or of future consequences of her or his present behaviors. (Historically, by the way, libertines have usually been aristocrats, "free" also of the need to work for their living.)
A libertine has no interest outside the field of his or her immediate pleasures, and so, unlike Liberalism or Libertarianism, "Libertinism" - if there were such a term - does not have any political relevance.
Yet, for the libertine as for the liberal or the libertarian, freedom is highly prized.
4. Liberal vs. Conservative
a.
In public discourse today, conservatism is said to contrast and oppose liberalism to an extreme degree. One would think that a conservative sees little or no value in what a liberal considers of the highest value and vice versa. To what extent is that true?
The term conservative may be used either as an adjective (as in "a conservative tendency") or as a noun (referring to a person with "conservative" values). Like "liberal" (and so many other English words), "conservative" comes from the Latin, meaning to keep intact or to guard.
A conservative person, as one would therefore think, wants to keep social order, to maintain or restore traditions, and to protect established customs and practices.
b.
In any society there is indeed a tension between the individual and his or her surrounding social institutions. Sometimes and in some ways, the importance of individual freedom within the society is emphasized, and at other times or in other ways, the importance of social order is emphasized. Most of us, of course, consider social order and individual freedom both as good things. Since they are in tension within our culture, as individual citizens as well as a body politic we struggle to find the right balance between the value of the individual's freedom and the value of the social order.
As we have seen, liberals tend to value individual freedom more than conservatives, and conservatives tend to place a higher value than liberals do on maintaining traditional standards and social order.
c.
However, both liberals and conservatives - like most of us - recognize the need for laws and enforcement officers when public safety is endangered or private property is damaged or stolen. In this way, both agree that in certain instances the good of society should be emphasized over the freedom of the individual. (A libertine, as we have seen, would not agree.) On the other hand, both conservatives and liberals also agree that individuals have civil rights, protected by the supreme law of the land, the U. S. Constitution. Where is the proper balance between the needs of the social order and the rights of the individual? A conservative would generally place the balance point closer to the side of tradition and social order, while the liberal would tend to place the balance point closer to the side of the individual and free choice.
When a conservative, for example, feels a particular type of individual act is immoral, he or she often wants to prohibit all the individuals in our country - even those with opposite views about the morality of the act - from taking that action.
When a liberal, on the other hand, learns of an effort to limit the freedom of an individual to determine her or his own actions, perhaps in order to safeguard moral or political or social interests, the liberal often resists.
Conservatives and liberals, therefore, agree (or profess to do so) on some basic principles about opposing "good's," the individual or society. A conservative perspective, then, is indeed distinguishable from a liberal perspective, but except for extremists both groups seek what seems to them to be the right balance between the two positive goods for the issue at hand and for the time.
5. Freedom and Poverty-Ignorance-Discrimination
5. Freedom and Poverty-Ignorance-Discrimination
A current governor was recently heard boasting about all the benefits of living in his state rather than in another state in the same region. In his state, he claimed, citizens enjoy low taxes, limited government, a large number of religious institutions, no estate tax ("None! Zero!" he said), and - despite the global recession - a strong economy with low unemployment.
The governor's interviewer cited a recent article listing less positive features of this state, including the highest rate in the nation of school drop-outs, the largest proportion of the population lacking health insurance, relatively polluted air and water, an above-average crime rate, and a large percentage of the population living below "the poverty line."
Liberals and conservatives should be able to agree that an uneducated, poor, ill and unsafe individual whose mother and father were also poor and who now lives in a crime infested environment - whatever else he or she might be - is not free. It would appear that in this particular governor's state, the preferred "balance" between the value of individual freedom and the good of the social order has reached an extreme position on the society side of the spectrum.
The uneducated, unskilled, perhaps illiterate individual is not free to take a decent-paying or long-term job, even if he or she can find employment of some kind. A poor individual is not free to live in a safe and pleasant neighborhood, and may not have a home of any sort. A sick person without insurance is not free to take good care of herself or himself. Such an individual's freedom is, at the very least, severely limited. A state or a nation with a significant proportion of poorly educated, poverty-stricken, and insecure citizens would not seem to value freedom, except of the wealthy few.
Seeking limited government and low taxes may support the "freedom" of the lucky, the rich, and the powerful, but it also contributes to the virtual imprisonment of the majority.
6. The Greater Good
It is a curious thing that the libertarian and the conservative today seem allied against the liberal. Libertarians, as this label implies, claim to value freedom just as the governor of the state discussed above seems to do. How can those who wish to imprison in ignorance and poverty many, perhaps the majority of their fellow citizens, how can they claim to value "liberty"?
All rulers, whether monarchs or other kinds of tyrant (like those today in North Korea and Myanmar), must have felt they were free to do whatever they decided to do. Using the "royal we," such a ruler might even have said, "Though we have some challenges, we have our freedom!" However, our perception today is that everyone else in those regimes was far from free: they had no "liberty" whatsoever, even though the social order may have been robustly fixed and protected.
The question, then, about conservatives who claim they are champions of freedom is, "Whom do they want to be free?" Libertines value only their own personal freedom to do as they please. Libertarians certainly value their own freedom, but also seem to think it would be good for everyone else to be free too, although how that could come about is unclear. Everyone with enough money, as produced by the current social order, which is dominated by rich global corporations, are those who conservatives seem to want to be free. Liberals, unlike libertines or libertarians, or even some conservatives, claim to be working to bring a significant degree of freedom to everyone (except perhaps to criminals who threaten both individuals and society).
The socially difficult issue of where the right balance is between the good of the individual and the good of society is exacerbated today by the morally difficult question as to whom a significant degree of freedom should be extended.
***
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Reminiscence: Off to Grad School
***
1
When I entered a large Midwestern university in 1960, I was convinced I wouldn’t go on to Graduate School. My father had an advanced degree and I respected him very much, but I wasn’t going down that path. I was going to be a writer, an ambition I didn’t really give up until much later.
I said to myself – and probably to a few close friends – that after college, I was going to live and work in New York City. That was the place for me, and if I had to work as a dishwasher in order to follow my dream, well, that’s what I would do. (Even at 18 it never occurred to me that I would ever find myself unable to get a job, and I never really believed my job would be unskilled labor… but I was ready, if it came to that.)
2
I did well in college. I liked learning all that stuff. Studying for Final Exams was actually one of my favorite parts! But even as I moved along in my senior year, I remained convinced that graduate school was not in my future. I was going to find a simple job – maybe in NYC, maybe not – and do my real work, writing, on the side… if I had to.
But as the Honors Seminar in my major moved into the Spring semester – okay, it was English – as all my Honor colleagues talked about their graduate school ambitions, it began to dawn on me that if I could get paid for it, doing graduate work would be less demanding than many other jobs, and I could still do my writing on the side. (This incidentally later turned out to be true.)
There were two good options for earning a living in graduate school (working full-time and going to grad school on the side, of course, which was not a good option since I would have no time to write). I could support myself and write on the side if I could get a fellowship that provided tuition, room, and board, or, less attractively, I could make it work if I could be hired as a graduate teaching assistant.
Everyone seemed to think I could basically write my own ticket, the really hard part being choosing where to apply. After all, I was going to graduate with honors, Phi Beta Kappa, with a Certificate of Merit, and Summa Cum Laude… Why worry?
So I applied for full fellowships at Harvard and Yale in English, at UCLA and USC in Cinematography (since I had been a film buff for years and wanted a creative career after all), at my own university for a full fellowship in Comparative Literature (since I had completed my junior year in Paris), and – in case all else failed – as an English teaching assistant at the Texas university where my Dad had taught (not English) for many years. Dad had said that the English Department hired a slew of TAs since the required two freshman composition courses were taught entirely by graduate students.
If my faculty advisors – I had gathered three or four by this time – expressed any interest in what I was hoping to do, none of them questioned my approach at all. I sent in all the required application materials, on time, and waited to see which among my offers would be the most attractive.
3
The grad school application deadline passed, and the results began to come in. I wasn’t even accepted into graduate school at Yale or Harvard. They apparently already had enough students from the Midwest. UCLA said it was doubtful they would have a fellowship available that year, and – as a new and relatively small department - they did not hire graduate assistants. USC actually offered me a fellowship worth a lot of money, but it only covered tuition. A big surprise was that my Dad’s university was suffering significant financial difficulties, and the English Department would be fortunate if they could keep employed the TAs they already had on the payroll who were only part-way through their graduate programs.
All my friends in the Honors Seminar, not knowing I had applied for the Comparative Literature fellowship, were dumbfounded to learn that a young woman whom we all regarded as fourth or fifth out of the twelve of us – in knowledge, insight, self-confidence, and creativity – had applied for and received the Comp Lit award.
When I asked one of my advisors if he knew why she had been selected instead of… well, I don’t know… me, he said, “Well, everyone knows that you’re going to California to study cinematography.”
4
Now that I had begun thinking that grad school was a better option for me than washing dishes in New York City, it was looking like dish-washing was my only possible career path!
When I sought advice from another faculty member, he said I should write all the big state universities I could think of, explain the situation, and see if they would offer me a TAship despite its being past the application deadlne. At my own university, they had awarded all the TAships they expected to have but my name would go on their back-up list in case...
I spent days and nights typing letters and resumes on my little Royal portable. I eventually sent out over thirty late applications. The Department Chair at the University of Illinois actually called to express his sympathy for the pickle I was in and to say they too had awarded all the positions they could afford in April, so long before they knew the size of the entering freshman class. But he went on to say that every year, they added a few TAs after freshman registration, so he was confident something would come along for me even though he couldn’t absolutely guarantee it. I really appreciated the straight talk, and I know now that it’s a near sure-thing that I could have gone ahead as though I had actually been hired.
One by one, these big universities wrote more or less the same thing: they couldn’t hire me yet but almost always had open positions at the last minute. Could they enroll me as a grad student now, hoping for the best?
5
As I mulled over my uncertain options, one of my Honor Seminar colleagues came into class one day and said he had a dilemma and wondered what the rest of us would advise him to do. F----- explained that he had been offered a graduate teaching assistantship at a fairly large private university in the Northeast, and he had also been offered a full fellowship in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He was actually undecided which offer to accept, perhaps because he was originally from the Northeast. Anyway, seeing how unanimous and animated our advice to him had been, he announced at the end of that day’s class that he was going to accept the Chicago offer.
Here was my chance! I asked F----- not to respond to the private university in the Northeast for three days, and I went right home and wrote to the Department Chair saying, “My friend F---- is going to turn down your generous offer of an assistantship… Why don’t you hire me instead?"
It seemed like it was by return mail that Dr. E----- sent me a contract. In the Fall when I arrived and went by to thank him, he seemed glad to see me and mentioned that they had never received one of the several recommendations for me that they needed. When I said that without delay I would call the professor in question – could it be the one who told me I was going to California? – Dr. E----- - whom I had never met before - said: “Oh, don’t worry. I wrote you a recommendation myself!”
[to be continued]
***
1
When I entered a large Midwestern university in 1960, I was convinced I wouldn’t go on to Graduate School. My father had an advanced degree and I respected him very much, but I wasn’t going down that path. I was going to be a writer, an ambition I didn’t really give up until much later.
I said to myself – and probably to a few close friends – that after college, I was going to live and work in New York City. That was the place for me, and if I had to work as a dishwasher in order to follow my dream, well, that’s what I would do. (Even at 18 it never occurred to me that I would ever find myself unable to get a job, and I never really believed my job would be unskilled labor… but I was ready, if it came to that.)
2
I did well in college. I liked learning all that stuff. Studying for Final Exams was actually one of my favorite parts! But even as I moved along in my senior year, I remained convinced that graduate school was not in my future. I was going to find a simple job – maybe in NYC, maybe not – and do my real work, writing, on the side… if I had to.
But as the Honors Seminar in my major moved into the Spring semester – okay, it was English – as all my Honor colleagues talked about their graduate school ambitions, it began to dawn on me that if I could get paid for it, doing graduate work would be less demanding than many other jobs, and I could still do my writing on the side. (This incidentally later turned out to be true.)
There were two good options for earning a living in graduate school (working full-time and going to grad school on the side, of course, which was not a good option since I would have no time to write). I could support myself and write on the side if I could get a fellowship that provided tuition, room, and board, or, less attractively, I could make it work if I could be hired as a graduate teaching assistant.
Everyone seemed to think I could basically write my own ticket, the really hard part being choosing where to apply. After all, I was going to graduate with honors, Phi Beta Kappa, with a Certificate of Merit, and Summa Cum Laude… Why worry?
So I applied for full fellowships at Harvard and Yale in English, at UCLA and USC in Cinematography (since I had been a film buff for years and wanted a creative career after all), at my own university for a full fellowship in Comparative Literature (since I had completed my junior year in Paris), and – in case all else failed – as an English teaching assistant at the Texas university where my Dad had taught (not English) for many years. Dad had said that the English Department hired a slew of TAs since the required two freshman composition courses were taught entirely by graduate students.
If my faculty advisors – I had gathered three or four by this time – expressed any interest in what I was hoping to do, none of them questioned my approach at all. I sent in all the required application materials, on time, and waited to see which among my offers would be the most attractive.
3
The grad school application deadline passed, and the results began to come in. I wasn’t even accepted into graduate school at Yale or Harvard. They apparently already had enough students from the Midwest. UCLA said it was doubtful they would have a fellowship available that year, and – as a new and relatively small department - they did not hire graduate assistants. USC actually offered me a fellowship worth a lot of money, but it only covered tuition. A big surprise was that my Dad’s university was suffering significant financial difficulties, and the English Department would be fortunate if they could keep employed the TAs they already had on the payroll who were only part-way through their graduate programs.
All my friends in the Honors Seminar, not knowing I had applied for the Comparative Literature fellowship, were dumbfounded to learn that a young woman whom we all regarded as fourth or fifth out of the twelve of us – in knowledge, insight, self-confidence, and creativity – had applied for and received the Comp Lit award.
When I asked one of my advisors if he knew why she had been selected instead of… well, I don’t know… me, he said, “Well, everyone knows that you’re going to California to study cinematography.”
4
Now that I had begun thinking that grad school was a better option for me than washing dishes in New York City, it was looking like dish-washing was my only possible career path!
When I sought advice from another faculty member, he said I should write all the big state universities I could think of, explain the situation, and see if they would offer me a TAship despite its being past the application deadlne. At my own university, they had awarded all the TAships they expected to have but my name would go on their back-up list in case...
I spent days and nights typing letters and resumes on my little Royal portable. I eventually sent out over thirty late applications. The Department Chair at the University of Illinois actually called to express his sympathy for the pickle I was in and to say they too had awarded all the positions they could afford in April, so long before they knew the size of the entering freshman class. But he went on to say that every year, they added a few TAs after freshman registration, so he was confident something would come along for me even though he couldn’t absolutely guarantee it. I really appreciated the straight talk, and I know now that it’s a near sure-thing that I could have gone ahead as though I had actually been hired.
One by one, these big universities wrote more or less the same thing: they couldn’t hire me yet but almost always had open positions at the last minute. Could they enroll me as a grad student now, hoping for the best?
5
As I mulled over my uncertain options, one of my Honor Seminar colleagues came into class one day and said he had a dilemma and wondered what the rest of us would advise him to do. F----- explained that he had been offered a graduate teaching assistantship at a fairly large private university in the Northeast, and he had also been offered a full fellowship in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He was actually undecided which offer to accept, perhaps because he was originally from the Northeast. Anyway, seeing how unanimous and animated our advice to him had been, he announced at the end of that day’s class that he was going to accept the Chicago offer.
Here was my chance! I asked F----- not to respond to the private university in the Northeast for three days, and I went right home and wrote to the Department Chair saying, “My friend F---- is going to turn down your generous offer of an assistantship… Why don’t you hire me instead?"
It seemed like it was by return mail that Dr. E----- sent me a contract. In the Fall when I arrived and went by to thank him, he seemed glad to see me and mentioned that they had never received one of the several recommendations for me that they needed. When I said that without delay I would call the professor in question – could it be the one who told me I was going to California? – Dr. E----- - whom I had never met before - said: “Oh, don’t worry. I wrote you a recommendation myself!”
[to be continued]
***
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