The Heart Of The Day

Finding The Heart Of Each Day

Before I began backpacking for 4 years in 2002, after retirement as a lobbyist, administrator and educator, and with my three boys grown and out of the house, a friend asked me to “report back to those at home what travel reveals about the human heart and what we have become in this world. To look beneath the surface of things to the heart of each day. Does hope exist? Are people still falling in love? Is everyone buying death as if it were cheap socks at a smoke sale?" I take this on. I look for clarity. I look for signs of courage…of strength of conviction rooted in heart…in an authentic identity, in myself as well as in others. I look for cheap socks…and death for sale. Regardless of their circumstances, I have found all this and people loving their friends and families. And laughing. Since 2006 I have been a foreigner living in Oaxaca Mexico...again finding both sorrow and joy. This blog is intending to keep family and friends apprised of my whereabouts, goings-on, world-watchings and idle thoughts. Anyone else who finds their way here is welcome to leave comments. Click on the thumbnail photos to enlarge them.

British Humor

March 6th, 2006

Ending the BBC news report today on the Oscar winners, the anchor noticed that the Icelandic singer Bjork was nowhere to be seen. “She was wearing the white feathered swan dress she wore her Oscar year,” he said, “and Dick Cheney shot her!”

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Tags: Britain, Chiang Mai, England, Europe, Funny Experiences, Thailand

The World A Playground?

March 4th, 2006

A friend recently emailed me asking what it is like to have all the world as my “playground.” This was my very brief answer:

Well, the best thing about traveling in developing countries like SE Asia, Africa and China is the smiles that fill the heart. Europeans generally ignore the people…very aloof…Americans are busy looking at buildings and statues and for something to buy. But if you make a cultural mistake and you smile and point to your head in Thailand and say “ting tong” (crazy in Thai) the people giggle and laugh and they love you for it because they are not used to Westerners being humble. Then the massages are wonderful $5-$8 for an hour. The food is incredible everywhere…a feast on the street…a big bowl of delicious noodle soup with pork for 50 cents that would cost $6 in the States. And if you stay in the cheap guesthouses instead of western style hotels that are exhorbitant by local economic standards, you meet wonderful travelers from all around the world. That is the fun part.

Then there is the work part. You get to practice patience and develop flexibility in dealing with inefficiency…and rules and regs that make no sense to a Westerner. You get used to the garbage and broken sidewalks with live electric wires hanging down everywhere…and the hacking and spitting Chinese. Pedestrians have no rights whatsoever so you have to watch you don’t get killed…the biggest vehicle on the road is king. You learn to be tolerant of other cultures…eg. it is considered rude in Thailand to be confrontatory and demanding. You learn that not everyone in the world wants to be American and that they love their own countries. People value their families over material things…and it rubs off.

And then you begin to notice other things. The police are not paid enough so they are always on the take and not to be trusted. Corrupt governments keep people impoverished. In fact, Prime Minister Thaksin in Thailand is being forced out of office as we speak…thousands demonstrating in the streets this week in Bangkok. I won’t even start on Robert Mugabe who is starving his own people in Zimbabwe and ought to be shot by somebody. And because of the government-controlled press, foreigners know more about China than the Chinese people themselves. I learn we don’t have it so bad in America.

So when I am in America I miss the warm-hearted people and the colorful streets and want to be here and when I am here I miss the humor, music, good roads, the efficiency and customer service (non-existent outside the U.S.) and general good governance with the exception of our foreign policy.

So briefly, that is what it is like to have the world as my playground. Actually travel is a very serious business. Besides being married and raising children, it is the most brutal spiritual work there is…needling selfish boundaries…culturing the heart. I think meditation is much less difficult!

Pico Iyer, author of “The Global Soul,” gives me great comfort. An Indian by birth, Pico was raised in England. Moved to California. Now lives with his significant other in Japan. If he can do it I can do it.

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Chiang Mai Thailand

March 4th, 2006

Flew from Koh Samui on Bangkok Air (the only airline off the island because Bangkok Air built the airport) and then on to Chiang Mai on budget Air Asia.

I guess Bob is in Bangkok, but I am in the Galare Guesthouse in a cozy Thai-style building on the Ping River that runs through the city. A broadband internet cable is plugged into my laptop. I am drinking real drip coffee made in my little Starbucks coffee maker on this blessedly cool morning and listening to Leonard Cohen on my tiny speakers.

I am mid-way through “All That Matters,” a lovely book by Wayson Chow about Chinese immigrants in the 1930’s in Vancouver B.C. Most of the Chinese those days were from the Pearl River Delta of Canton China who came as merchants to Chinatown in Vancouver or as workers on the railroad.

I catch up on the news in the U.S. on BBC TV…much better coverage than we get from US media. I am following the political crisis in Thailand in the English-language Bangkok Post in the downstairs open-air restaurant at breakfast each morning. In the streets of Bangkok thousands of people have been demonstrating for constitutional reform and an end of corruption…calling for Prime Minister Thaksin to step down. And that is really something for a culture that generally disdains confrontation. Locals are hoping there will not be a repeat of the military coup in the late 90’s that left scores of students dead in the streets.

I am walking distance to the Night Market (actually a street market) that bustles with open-street cafes until midnight. I usually don’t take the Tuk Tuks in Thailand because I am tall and the ceilings of these things slant downwards making it difficult to see ahead but they are the best way to get around in this city because they can dodge through the smooth-paved alleyways avoiding all the one-way streets. I like this city. Much quieter…even the Tuk Tuks don’t sound like weed-eaters…and the traffic isn’t as nuts as it is in Bangkok and on the islands.

More farangs (White westerners) in this town than I’ve seen anywhere in Thailand (even the islands because most tourists there just stay within hotel compounds) so Chiang Mai seems to be quite the tourist destination. Tour companies offer trips to places like the national parks, elephant training camps and to the Golden Triangle where Thailand meets the Lao, Chinese and Burmese borders that is famous for the opium trade of years past. I am thinking I will take one of these trips…maybe to the Golden Triangle…and to Chiang Rai through colorful Akha, Karen, Lisu and Palong hill tribe villages.

How long can I stay in my room, I ask the smiling girl at the reception desk. Until way next month, she says laughing. Maybe I will.

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Tags: Chiang Mai, Hotels,Hostels & Guesthouses, Markets, Reading, Thailand

Good-bye To Samui

March 4th, 2006

On 1 March I said good-bye to my son Doug and his wife Luk and Ting Tong…their little Shimizu…and caught a Bangkok Air flight back to Bangkok (Bangkok Air built the airport on Samui so they won’t let any other company fly in there) where I then transferred to budget Air Asia to fly to Chiang Mai in the north.

They had wanted Ting Tong to sire some puppies with Mark’s female (Mark was the guy who owned the last house I stayed in) but whenever we tried to get them together Ting Tong would run and hide. “Ting Tong’s a katoey!” He’s a katoey!” Luk squealed. For those of you who don’t know, katoeys are “lady boys” or transexual Thai men who are usually more beautiful than the women themselves…tall, slender, elegant…and they are wonderful entertainers. As a point of fact one of the local hospitals has a famous surgical sex change unit occupying an entire floor. The doctor there will even do vaginal rejuvenations. Look that one up on the web! 🙂

I will miss them all. Doug and Luk would often spat and then minutes later it would all be over and I would hear giggles and “Sexy man number one Hollywood!” Then “Sexy lady number one Thailand.” David, an American builder from Michigan who owns a cafe up the street and is married to a Thai said “Oh, yes, they will spat but in a couple years it will die down…it’s usually due to language or cultural misunderstandings.”

David’s wife is an excellent cook in his open air beach-front cafe across the road from four houses he built to sell and had installed WiFi in them all…so all I had to do was drive about 600 yards up the road and sit in the cafe with my iBook laptop to check my email while drinking coffee yen (iced coffee). Or use my headphones to call my other sons, Greg and Josh, in the U.S. using Skype, free peer-to-peer telephony software developed by a Swede and an Estonian a couple years ago. (Check out “skype” on the web.) If both parties have Skype installed the calls are free. Otherwise the calls cost practically nothing. I have about $10 credit, have made more than half dozen calls for several minutes each and I still have about $8 credit remaining.

The last night on Samui we went to John’s Seafood for dinner for Luk’s 27th birthday. The upscale restaurant has about 50 tables right on the sandy beach and features a traditional Thai dancing show. During our meal, a large wedding party from Australia all took turns lighting fires under huge white cloth lanterns down by the water while making a wish.
The lit lanterns floated up into the night sky among the stars over the Gulf Of Siam while a singer sang “I Will Always Love You.” Enough to bring tears to the most hardened cynic. We took home the birthday cake we had brought for Luk’s birthday. Who would have had the heart to upstage a party like that? Luk called her mom on the phone and we all sang happy birthday together.

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Tags: Doug, Food, Koh Samui, Restaurants, Thailand

International Night On Koh Samui

February 25th, 2006

We’re back on Samui and I have rented a brand new furnished one bedroom house for $12.00 a night at “Solitude Resort” on a mountainside about a mile from Doug and Luk’s bungalow.

The first evening we were welcomed by our next door neighbors, a hilarious 55 year old skinny Austrian jewelry maker, Stefan, with a shaved head except for a very long salt and pepper pony-tail in back, and his flirty 30 year old Mongolian wife. He was escaping the extremely harsh European winter, he said. The owner of the simple “resort” with six houses and a swimming pool is a youngish Brit, Mark, from Yorkshire, and I understand only about half his English. His wife is a pretty young Hmong tribal woman from Lao. (I confess I can remember the names of neither woman.)

The Austrian and his wife were pretty well oiled by the time we arrived about 6 in the evening…Doug, and Luk and I opting for juice. The 7 of us sat on the front porch fighting mosquitos while the two guys regaled us with stories about how they met their wives (Stefan and his wife were both working in “Czecki” and Mark met his wife in Vientiane, Lao while on a post university year of travel) and about the difficulties in getting married when there are no consolates (Austrian or British) in the respective countries they are trying to get permission to marry in (Mongolia and Lao).

The women, with minimal English, gave up on trying to follow the hurried conversation and lapsed into a smaller discussion between themselves about how they had been married for 5 and 7 years and still had no children. To get married, Stefan had to go through the Australian Embassy in Beijing…Mark the Australian Embassy in Britain. Stefan was told he had to pay $125 for something but that it was “impossible to do!” (We all laughed having heard similar injunctions many times before!) Mark had to pay off officials all the way up the bureaucratic chain to the tune of $1500 to get the usual year waiting period reduced to three months. He had to fill out 25 forms that had to be translated in four different languages (the fourth because Mark’s father is from Mauritius off the coast of Africa). One of the forms Mark had to sign was an affadavit saying he had never slept with his prospective bride…if he had refused he could have been hauled off to jail…it being against the law to sleep with a woman in Lao if you are not married! I thought to myself that the pressure from the local families, probably financial as well as cultural, for these couples to be married must have been pretty strong to get these guys to go through all this rigamarole. Or maybe I have just become cynical!

Then, as usual between expats, the discussion turned to the lack of local efficiency…Mark lamenting about how any tools made in Thailand were sure to break or fall apart as soon as they were purchased…make sure anything you buy is made in China or the west he advises. And Stefan had stories about how gems were glass, earrings made of tin infected his wife’s pierced ears, and the gold he tried to make jewelry with broke apart because the 24 carot gold was so soft. (The Thais won’t have anything but pure gold. It’s a status thing.) This we already know of course. The evening’s black humor produced a lot of much needed comic relief. But, Mark says, even so, every place in the world having it’s ups and downs he would never choose to give up living in “Paradise.” We are all learning to live “mai pen rai!” loosely translated meaning “no worries’ or “never mind!”

This morning as I was leaving the house on the back of Doug’s bike, Mark was cleaning the pool. A 60ish year old Italian guy was animatedly trying to teach Mark Italian…in Italian…Mark patiently nodding and smiling all the while. Mark caught my eye and we had a good laugh!

These experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.

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Tags: Conversations, Culture, Expats, Hotels,Hostels & Guesthouses, Koh Samui, Thai Culture, Thailand

Koh Pha Ngan

February 24th, 2006

Doug Luk and I took a break from Samui and put the car on the ferry for the two hour trip north to the island of Koh Pha Ngan for a couple days. Almost no car and truck traffic, motorcycles or pot-holes=bliss! This is the island, two-thirds the size of Samui, of the legendary full-moon parties but luckily we were there only during the post-half-moon party…the southeast beaches full of 20-something Europeans in dreadlocks and a slew of Israelis. We stayed on a serene northeast beach…me in an aircon bungalow and Doug and Luk in a 300 baht fan bungalow facing the Gulf Of Siam.

A drive up to the end of the paved road landed us at sunset in a sandy beach restaurant watching the sun go down while eating fresh-caught baracuda and spicy Thai salad…and we are leaving all this on the ferry in two days?!!

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Tags: Boats, Excursions, Food, Koh Pha Ngan, Koh Samui, Thailand

Clean Clean Clean

February 20th, 2006

Luk does the laundry by hand on the tiled shower floor…the water draining down a hole. She uses a brush and scrubs her heart out…twice with plain soap…and then a third time with “smell-good soap”…rinsing after each wash. She has worn a nasty blister on her third knuckle which looks infected. Doug is worried his clothes will end up with holes in them and I am worried about Luk’s knuckle. (Not that Doug isn’t worried about Luk’s knuckle too!) So we take my rented jeep and make a run to Tesco-Lotus (British version of Costco) and I buy them a little Siemens wash machine which probably doesn’t get the clothes half as clean as before but what the heck. They are gleeful.

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Now…Not Later

February 5th, 2006

It is typical for Thais to think only about what to do now…not some time in the future. So when Doug was showing me houses to buy next year, we asked Luk where she wanted to go next…her answer was “the supermarket!” Doug just laughed and said “that is just classic!”

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Tags: Culture, Koh Samui, Thai Culture, Thailand

Eurotrash

February 3rd, 2006

I have learned a new ethnic slur…”eurotrash”…which apparently refers to the white Europeans who come to third world countries claiming to be somebody big back home but selfishly feeding off the local generosity…the word, I think, usually used by the Americans. I think neo-nazi but instead of big and burly they are usually heroin thin and covered with tatoos.

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Visiting Doug & Luk

February 3rd, 2006

Arrived on Koh Samui a couple days ago on Bangkok Air to the smiling faces of Doug and Luk at the small open-air airport on Koh Samui. (Koh means island.) While waiting for the luggage Luk, looking cute in her pigtails, was approached by four young good-looking guys just off the plane who I think maybe were from northern Africa. Not wasting any time “I love you,” one said to Luk. She just laughed and said she was “already marry!”

Doug and Luk live on the non-touristed side of the island…north of Chaweng, in an area called Thong Krut. Their lovely house is one back from the beach…their nearest neighbor a Belgian guy who has lived here 10 years. Another neighbor across the way is a retired engineer from England who is building his own hover craft…only 11 in the world with wings he says.

Doug has been cooking Thai…going to the local market each morning for fresh puk (vegetables) and seafood. In the evenings, looking out at the blood-red sun setting behind the ocean, Doug sighs…grateful for his life here in “paradise” with Luk.

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Shower Lay Down

February 1st, 2006

Doug and Luk call me every morning. Sometimes I am awake and sometimes not. This morning Luk says “Good morning mom!” “I love mom!” “I miss mom!” “One more day!” Doug gets on the phone and tells me that Luk says I’d better take a “shower lay down” before I leave Bangkok for Koh Samui while I still have a bathtub!

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Cosmechanics

January 31st, 2006

In front of the Rumburi Esthetique, on Sukhumvit 39, next door to my dentist, a sign offers, at Special Price, Cosmechanic, Face Lift and Anti Wrinkle, Sparkling Face & Pore Treatment, Anti Cellulite & Fluid Drain, Body Slim & Firming, Breast Enlargement & Firming, Massage, Beauty Eyelash Extention, Beauty Ritual Night To Be Indonesian Bride!

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Tags: Bangkok, Language, Thailand

The Meaning of Riaproy

January 31st, 2006

Some friends that spent a year in Thailand with the Peace Corps have said there is an additional Thai value that is called “riaproy.” “It means polite and well-mannered; neat. It also means orderly; ready-to-go. Rarely do you see a sloppily-groomed Thai. Daily baths and freshly-laundered and pressed clothes are the norm. Riaproy also refers to polite behavior, and fits with the concept of “jai yen” (cool or calm heart) and the importance of avoiding confrontation, saving face, etc. You can see riaproy behavior on public transportation, when adults give their seats to children, and teens and adults give their seats to elderly people (or grey-headed ones like me!) Another example of riaproy might be the beautifully displayed fruits, vegetables and fish in the most ordinary markets. When a Thai person says, “She is riaproy”, it is a compliment. A riaproy person is a good model of behavior and appearance admired by Thai people.”

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Bangkok Street Scenes

January 31st, 2006

Sidewalk Seamstress

Small Family

Taking A Break From Shopping
Waiting To Shop

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Coffee Yen

January 31st, 2006

Iced Coffee Stands
Coffee Yen

Coffee Yen 2

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Street Food

January 31st, 2006

Eggs For Sale

Soup Stand
Street Restaurant

BBQ
BBQ

BBQ2
BBQ 2

BBQ3
BBQ 3

Fruit Stand
Fruit

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Motorcycle Serenade

January 31st, 2006

Last night I hopped a motorcycle taxi at the corner. “Where you from?” the cute young driver asked. “America,” I said. “America Pie” he sang to me all the way to my dentist appointment. “I used to work at cocktail bar,” he laughed, “and I learn all the words to American Pie!” I enjoyed the song but really hoped I wasn’t going to lose my knees as he dodged in and out the cars and other cyclists at terrifying speed.

Motorcycles

Waiting For Riders

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Bar Girls

January 31st, 2006

Bar Girls Waiting For Customers To Buy Them A Beer And Whatever…

Bar Girls 2

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Street Noodles

January 23rd, 2006

My favorite food in Thailand is one of the many varieties of noodle soup found on street carts. Street food is safe if you select a cart in early to mid day, when the food will be fresh, and watch to see that the broth has been boiling. There usually is a choice of wide or narrow noodles. There will be a table or two where I can sit and add ground chilis or chili oil, fish sauce or sugar (Thais put sugar in everything which is why I think Thai food appeals to Westerners) to a steaming bowl of rather sweet clear broth that I think is made with turnips. I usually request fish balls, fried ground pork or crispy pork and bean sprouts from a selection of meat and vegetables resting on shelves in a small glass case in front of the huge pot of broth. (I avoid the reddish-brown chunks in the case which my son says is congealed blood.) All for 25 baht or about 50 cents.

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A Light In The South of Thailand

January 23rd, 2006

Visitors, to the south of Thailand, including foreigners, will soon have an opportunity to experience muslim life in a village in the province of Yala. A “Widower’s Village” is being built in Rotanbu Village under a resettlement project funded by Her Majesty the Queen. The 150 homes, built by the Thai military, are for Buddhist and Muslim women who lost loved ones in terrorist attacks and deaths caused by the Thai military in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Holiday makers can stay in a home for a week-end for 200 baht ($5) a day. The Queen requests that visitors not interfere with muslim prayer rituals out of respect for the Quran. There will be no time for loneliness, one woman says.

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Lucky Luk!

January 20th, 2006

I called my son Doug yesterday morning. He had just returned from the fish market on Koh Samui with a salad bowl of large fresh gung (shrimp) with heads still on for $1.60 and had cooked up a traditional Thai omelet with puk (vegetables) and prik (chilis) and steamed rice. Doug does all the cooking. Lucky Luk!

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Teach The Children What?

January 19th, 2006

On National Children’s Day in Thailand, it is a tradition for the Prime Minister to deliver a positive “motto.” This year the wealthy PM Thaksin who owns Thai Air and other assets said that children should read more and think for themselves so they become smart successful adults. A secondary student, however, respectfully asked the PM whether children should value honesty and simplicity over succeeding by any means necessary. Oops.

The irony is that the PM evidently does not believe in advocating the same for the adults ministers under him. Amid flagging popularity in the cities and on-going feuding with the press, Thaksin recently took a dog and pony show to Roi Et in an impoverished province in the northeast. In his “reality show” he says he has done all the thinking and ministers just have to follow his instructions, eg, women should add sticky rice to their hand-woven baskets to add value…never mind that the coconut milk in sticky rice would sour on it’s way to Bangkok.

Most people here seem to think (for themselves) as, one columnist put it, “it’s just a stunt to fool the farmers” into thinking he is doing something for them. “When he comes to camp out in Roi Et just to give us some buffalos, land or knock-down houses it goes to show he doesn’t understand the root causes of poverty.”

Most people reportedly are not even listening to the show as it is on pay for view TV that most cannot afford.

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Bumrungrad Hospital

January 19th, 2006

Nearly as diverse as New York, sitting in a Bumrungrad waiting room is a show of national and ethnic costume…many from the middle east…burkas, jalabas and Arabic head wear…males greeting each other by touching noses…or foreheads…I couldn’t tell.

The hospital, which caters to expats and foreigners, has an American CEO, is run by U.S. hospital standards and provides care in the English language. Most of the doctors have obtained their degrees and practiced medicine in the US…returning to Thailand to retire near their families with inexpensive household help, cooks and gardeners. Plush and efficient, it hardly even feels like a hospital. You are allowed to consult any kind of specialist you want without a referral…last year I saw a cardiologist who, upon reading an echocardiogram, adjusted my medication that brought down my blood pressure by 30 points. If I had had similar care in the U.S. much earlier I might have avoided a thickening of the heart muscle but doctors there avoid expensive tests and “unnecessary” referrals.

Today, I had a routine blood screen, chest film, physical exam and eye exam all for 5000 baht, or $125 and considering that my American insurance has a $1,000 deductible, it’s a deal to have medical care here. And that doesn’t even take into account the incredibly respectful and gracious Thai demeanor.

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Bangkok Business

January 12th, 2006

Nearby, in ironically named Washington Square, is the Bourbon Street Bar and Restaurant where an entire wall, surrounding a dart board, is covered by business cards. Here is a sampling that you would probably not see at home:

Halliburton, Trident Sea and Freight Forwarding, Salvaging, Finnish Friends of Thailand, UNICEF, BMW, Top Control-Henri (Hank) A. Brittain MSChE, Ph.d, Thunder Cranes, China Airlines, Japan Air Charter, Budweiser Worldwide Marketing, Unocal, Chevron Texaco, International Travel and Migration Company, Transair Cambodia, Advanced Concepts International, Special Forces-Operational Detachment Ft. Lewis WA, Weatherfold Drilling & Wells, NEM Energy Services, Commander US Naval Reserve, Baseball Ireland, Bush Pilot Expeditions-7 Continents, “Land Shark,” International Rigging.

And finally The Republic of Texas-Propaganda Minister of Land, Whiskey, Manure, Nails, Fly Swatters, Racing Forms, Used Boots, Wars Fought, Revolutions Started, Governments Run, Bars Emptied, Uprisings Quelled, Revolutions Lead, Wakes Conducted, Blimps Washed, Lost Wives Found, Computers Verified!

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Insurgency In The South of Thailand

January 12th, 2006

Since January 2004, southern Thailand has been gripped by a shadowy insurgency that has killed over 1,000 people and divided local communities along religious and ethnic lines. “Bangkok,” ie the Thai government, has responded forcefully to the security threat, but the violence continues.

So who exactly is behind the insurgency? To shed light on this murky conflict and provide a regional perspective on the security threat, last night the Foreign Correspondents Club sponsored a panel discussion of some of the foremost researchers in this field. Zachary Abuza, professor of political science at Simmons College, Boston, an expert on Jemaah Islamiyah who was responsible for the Bali bombings and author of a forthcoming book on the conflict in southern Thailand joined Francesca Lawe-Davies, a Jakarta-based analyst for the International Crisis Group who covers Thailand for this respected think tank and Don Pathan, regional desk editor at the Nation, a frequent reporter on the complex political, ethnic and social make-up of the south.

There are concerns that the wave of bombings could eventually spread to other parts of Thailand. For decades, the Malay people in the three provinces in the south that were incorporated in recent history into Thailand, have resisted a forced assimilation into Thai buddhist culture. The three Thai pillars of nation, religion (Buddhist) and monarchy just doesn’t jive with Islam. The feeling in the south is that this is our land and why should we change for you? The panel agreed that the violence seems to be spurred by an ethno-nationalist movement that wants to reclaim Pattani as the Malay Muslim homeland…their historic Islamic Sultinate…that they are very proud of. It includes Islam but does not seem to be part of the international Wahabi religious jihad.

There seems to be no infighting among the younger generation of resistors that have spurred bragging rights in other areas like Iraq in order to get on the international radar screen. Rather the motivation of local cells working autonomously with periodic coordinated attacks seems to be religious purification with incredibly long term goals coupled with a separatist movement that resents the perceived lack of respect from the Thai government. There is a perception of neglect and a sense of injustice due to the killings and heavy handedness of the Thai military that has fostered fear and alienation which allows the insurgents to manipulate the locals.

Many insurgents report that they don’t believe they will be successful in their lifetimes. The panel agreed that there doesn’t seem to be an endgame to the violence as long as “Bangkok” refuses to let go of the mind set of assimilation and apologize for the government’s mistakes. And who believes that will ever happen?

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Thai News

January 8th, 2006

Six days of U.S./Thai trade talks in Chiang Mai has resulted in a stalemate with the help of 10,000 protesters…an alliance of 11 groups who are resisting trade liberalization. They are not ready, says the director of the AIDS Success Foundation, for expensive drugs caused by prolonged protection of intellectual property rights that will only benefit a few businesses instead of the Thai people. Other activists and academics have expressed grave concern that liberalized trade would open Thailand to foreign firms that would bring western values that would destroy the already endangered Thai way of life.

The irony was stark, however, when in the same week the Bangkok Post featured a glossy full page picture of Thailand’s beloved “Jazzy King” playing his saxaphone…celebrating six decades during which he has inspired, entertained and encouraged Thai people. He plays on Saturday nights at Klai Kingworld Palace on Hua Hin Beach south of Bangkok where the 78 year old king lives. He learned to play while he was studying as a student in Lucerne Switzerland. He and his band plays Dixieland, New Orleans and Big Band music and has jammed with the likes of Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton. He sometimes composes spontaneously while playing…an aide writing the notes while he blows.

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Familiar Bangkok

January 7th, 2006

Arrived in Bangkok on Jan 3rd on China Air after 17 hours and stops in Anchorage and Taiwan. There has been a cooling in Asia (northern India actually falling below freezing) and it has been mild with a nice breeze here.

Bob is somewhere else in Thailand I guess…he left a New York a few days before I did.

But it has been fun to have Doug and Luk stay with me in Bangkok this last week. We have been running errands…went to American Consolate to get more pages added to my passport and Doug ordered a new passport as his got wrecked when he was drenched in the water festival last spring. Then to Thai Consolate. Luk is delighted to have a new Thai passport with her married name on it! Now there are two Mrs. Goetz’s in Bangkok!

They will return to their home on Koh Samui Friday on the train. I will meet them on the island at the end of the month when my remaining dental work will be completed.

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Tags: Bangkok, Bob's Trips, Doug, Koh Samui, Progeny, Thailand, Visas

New Years Eve in NY

January 3rd, 2006

Bob left for Thailand on the 29th. Josh had to work at the restaurant so Amy and I spent New Years Eve drinking wine and champagne…good conversation with my daughter-in-law…and watching “Wedding Crashers.” She spent the night and then left with Josh in the morning to join some friends upstate for a couple days for a little break in the action.

New Years for me was spent cleaning the apartment with a little time to watch “Crash,” set in LA and the best depiction of racial problems in America I have seen.

A town car arrived at 7pm to take me to Kennedy airport for my 10pm flight to Bangkok. Where are you from, the tall elegant driver asked. Oregon, I answered…where are you from? Africa, he said. Yes, I said, but what country? Sudan was the answer. Oh, I said woefully, much trouble there now. Oh, no, he said, no trouble!! Then he spent the rest of the trip analyzing Bush’s foreign policy…most of which I agreed with. He wasn’t married but said that if he ever had children he wouldn’t raise them in New York City, where he has lived for the last 12 years, but that he would return to Sudan. But his insistent denial of trouble in his country that have left thousands dead left me mystified.

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Tags: flights, Joshua, New York City, USA

Ellen Makes Happy

December 28th, 2005

One of the things I will miss when we leave for Thailand is watching Ellen DeGeneris on television. Her recent reruns of her shows produced in New York City…a stunning view of Columbus Circle through a three story wall of windows behind her…was wonderful. The windows, she said, cost $10,000 each time they are washed. That’s New York. Her stock exchange visit on Wall Street was hilarious….asking serious questions of unsuspecting brokers…and then giving ridiculous responses….like asking if she can buy “chicken stock!” Then she picked up the phone like she was ordering a stock offering but instead left all the exchange workers with delivered pizza.

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A Christmas Gift Brooklyn 2005

December 26th, 2005

After rack of lamb marinated with fresh oregano, thyme, garlic and olive oil; tender gratin of baby spinach in a bechamel sauce with snow crab and east coast clams; brussel sprouts braised with bacon and deglazed with cream sherry; spaghetti squash with maple syrup, butter and cinnamon; tiny green beans with garlic and thyme; a salad with carmelized pears, shaved fresh fennel and a crumbled rare blue cheese; tiny boiled red potatoes bathed in herbs and olive oil…multiple bottles of wine and champagne, and finally Amy’s apple pie, the eight of us at Christmas dinner last night are still full this morning!

Josh and Amy arrived at our apartment Christmas morning loaded up with flowers, sacks of Christmas stocking stuffers, an “egg bake,” a family Christmas morning tradition in her family, and sacks of ingredients to be used for cooking the evening meal. This was in addition to the two huge boxes of food that Josh had ordered from www.freshdirect.com and had delivered to the apartment the night before!

Josh and a friend of Josh’s from Eugene Oregon, Gabe, who is also a chef here in New York City and worked with Josh when he was at the Savoy, spent the entire day preparing an incredible dinner…Josh’s Christmas gift to Bob and me. Gabe brought pink roses and a malange of rare cheeses for an appetizer. Gabe’s mother, Bonny, in town for the holidays, joined us as did Gabe’s girlfriend who brought a huge tin of cookies baked by her mother. Later, another chef who worked with Josh at the Savoy and is originally from Bend Oregon and his wife, who was at the New England Culinary Institute with Josh, came by. We toasted Oregon with three Willamette Valley Pinot Noir wines, one of which was a highly respected St. Innocent…the winemaker, Mark Vlossak, formerly a Pediatric practitioner we knew in Salem.

Josh’s restaurant, Toqueville, also has a catering business. It is not unusual for Josh and selected wait staff to provide an in-home cooked dinner for a client…usually business-oriented…costing upwards of 10 to 30 thousand dollars for parties of 10-50 people…Josh often getting as much as a $1,000 tip. Josh is proud that clients often request him personally. Fancy expense accounts. And we are in pretty fancy company!

During the conversation, the “New Yorkers” started making fun of tourists who, emerging from underground subway exits, clog mid-town sidewalks and stumble along with eyes bugged skyward…while the locals frustratingly shoulder their way forward…always in a hurry. Gabe’s bright mom, who is one of Eugene’s city councilwomen had the perfect come-back. And what about those north-bound east coast tourists who clog up the freeways at 30 miles an hour gaping at snow-capped Mt. Hood or the RV’s backing up traffic on Oregon coastal highway 101! A good laugh then!

Twelve bottles of wine and champagne later we ended the meal with a delicious flaky apple pie Amy had baked that morning.

This was the first Christmas we have spent with Josh in the last ten years. And more Christmases than that since the whole family was together…and the first Christmas in three years that we have not spent in some foreign country alone. Thank you dear Josh! Now if only we could have had our other sons Greg, who is in Las Vegas, and Doug, who lives in Thailand, with us…

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The Subway Strike Is Over

December 23rd, 2005

and we are liberated!

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More On Mao

December 23rd, 2005

We are grounded by the subway strike so have been reading more of the biography of Mao by authors Jung Chang, the author of the wonderful three-generation epic “Wild Swans,” and her British husband Jon Halliday.

What is especially interesting so far, is that this biography reveals much heretofor unknown information about Mao Tse Tung and the Cultural Revolution in China. Mao, for decades, held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population and was responsible for “well over 60 million deaths in peacetime,” more than any other twentieth-century leader. He used terrorism to try to establish China as a world-wide military nuclear power and to seat himself as it’s leader. To do this he wanted to draw draw Russia and America into a world war. Russia, hoping to appease Mao, allowed him to start the Korean War…Korea’s Kim even taking his orders from Mao. Mao sent thousands and thousands of troops into Korea thinking the Americans would never know the difference between Chinese and Koreans…and he was ready to sacrifice untold millions of people. He knew the Americans wouldn’t tolerate the body bags. Stalin (“The Master”) held the line, but when Stalin died, Khrushchev pulled the plug.

The detail illustrates Mao’s premeditated cruelty unprecidented in modern history. The authors had access to the Russian archives, interviewed hundreds of key people that are still alive…Russians, Chinese, Americans and anyone else who had a role during this time.

Values in China are carried forward by the culture…not by any ethical or civic standard. I could feel reverberations of China’s past during our several months in the country.

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Tags: China, History, Mao, New York City, Reading, Reflections, Trains, Transportation

Human Rights In China

December 17th, 2005

Yesterday, as Bob and I stepped out the door of the Thai Consolate on E 52nd St. where we were applying for our visas to Thailand, we were met by about 50 Chinese people holding up banners condemning the beating of Falun Gong practitioners by police in Thailand last week. As I reported in an earlier blog, China is sending out agents to other countries to monitor the activities of not only mainland Chinese but also Chinese citizens of other countries. But we were surprised that Thailand of all countries would apparently support China in this horrendous persecution of such an innocuous activity.

Falun Gong claims it is a form of meditation with gentle exercises that cultivates inner balance by teaching truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Falun Gong is becoming wildly popular in China and in over 60 countries worldwide. Practitioners claim that Communist Party head Jiang Zemin, fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread popularity will overshadow his own legacy, has ordered the traditional Chinese practice “eradicated.” This means that 100 million citizens are apparently cast as criminals. In the past five years, up to one million people, practitioners claim, have been illegally detained, with many tortured in slave-labor camps, psychiatric hospitals and prisons. More than 1,060 are confirmed dead with the actual number estimated to be more than 10,000. Practitioners are fined, fired from jobs, denied graduation, forced to divorce and flee their homes.

All Chinese press is state-controlled and people are told that the meditation is evil and drives people crazy. A couple years ago, Bob and I ran across a young girl who was waiting on us in a restaurant in a small southern town who was horrified that I thought Falun Gong was not dangerous!

Dr. Charles Lee, an American citizen was sentenced in March 2003 to three years in prison for planning to broadcast information on state-run TV about the persecution of Falun Gong. Dr. Lee has been subjected to force-feeding, brainwashing, beatings and slave labor, and denied contact with friends, family and U.S. consular officials. (http://rescuecharles.org).

US businesses and government officials supportive of Falun Gong have also been pressured and intimated to the extent that on Oct 4 2004, in response to the many cases of harrassment and violence by Chinese agents on U.S. soil, The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 304 that said “The Government of the People’s Republic of China should immediately stop interfering in the exercise of religious and political freedoms within the U.S. such as the right to practice Falun Gong, that are guaranteed by the US constitution.

The NY Times runs stories, many front-page, almost daily about human rights abuses in China. Today, we read about one lawyer, Gao Zhang, who travels the country filing lawsuits over corruption, land seizures, police abuses and religious freedom. His opponent is usually the same: the ruling Communist Party. As a result of his successes, he has had his license revoked and has finally fled to the hills of Shanxi where he is persuing another case against the party on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners.

Yesterday on the front page was an article about the sleepy fishing village of Dongzhou, just 125 miles north of Hong Kong, the scene of a deadly face-off between protesters hurling homemade bombs and the police gunning them down in the streets. The article says “many facts remain unclear about the police crackdown” on a Dongzhou demonstration on Dec 6 protesting against the construction of a coal-fired power plant that the villagers knew was not approved by the central government. Residents say police fired into the crowd of demonstrators killing 20 or more people. But one thing is certain: The government is doing everything possible to prevent witnesses accounts of what happened from emerging by offering people money to keep quiet.

“Rural confrontations are increasing in China as local authorities confiscate land for construction of factories, power plants and other projects,” says the NY Times.

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Tags: China, New York City, USA, World Watching And Politics

New York City Trivia

December 14th, 2005

A friend from South Africa sent me some geography trivia:

The term “The Big Apple” was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s who used the slang expression “apple” for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time – The Big Apple. There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.

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More Life in Brooklyn

December 8th, 2005

According to the winter issue of BKLYN magazine, Brooklyn, N.Y., barkeep Andy Heidel has drawn a line in the sawdust, posting the following on recent Sundays outside the Patio Lounge in Park Slope:

“THE STROLLER MANIFESTO”
“What is it with people bringing their kids into bars? What, just because there’s no more smoking, it’s okay? I’m sorry, it isn’t. A bar is a place for adults to kick back and relax. How can you do that with a toddler running around or crying, getting changed on the table next to you, or being breast-fed? And is a bar really the kind of environment a child should be exposed to? I know in Europe it is commonplace, but hey — this is America, baby. Besides, bars are “21 and over.” Just because a 5-year-old obviously won’t get served, it doesn’t mean they should be in there. And don’t get me started about the strollers blocking access to the bar, seating, and the looks I get when I ask someone to move their stroller because it is obviously in the way of not only me but also everyone else. Doublewide strollers are the bane of Park Slope…

…I’m sick of kids and strollers in bars, and so are a lot of other people. If you can’t find a sitter and have to go out with your child, for the love of god, go to a family restaurant like Two Boots or the Tea Lounge, for I declare today and all future Sundays, Stroller Free.”

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Babies Take Manhattan

December 5th, 2005

Nanny’s pushing babies in strollers are everywhere in Brooklyn, we noticed soon after arriving here, so it was no surprise when the New York Times ran a story December 1 called “The Children Are Back” … “Babies Take Manhattan” a reference to a Leonard Cohen song.

After a decade of steady decline, the story goes, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan increased more than 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. The preschool population reached almost 97,000 in Manhattan alone last year, the most since the 1960’s. The growth seems to be at both ends of the economic spectrum…the growing number of immigrants…and professional families who apparently are wanting to avoid the daily commute into increasingly more expensive suburbs in the outer boroughs and New Jersey.

And…I would venture…the decision by younger educated career moms to balance out their lives closer to the workplace with one of the most important values in a person’s life….family. As for the increasing number of Mexican immigrants in the El Barrio of east side Manhattan…I am willing to bet there was never any question.

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Museum Of Natural History

December 1st, 2005

When we were in southern China last year we spent some time hiking and driving through parts of mountainous Yunnan Province that are populated primarily with, not Han Chinese, but with “minorities.” (Their word.) So when I saw that the museum was offering a special photo exposition of the Yi and Naxi peoples, we were off…walking on a gorgeous sunny day through Central Park to the museum on the west side.

A non-profit organization had given cheap point and shoot cameras to over 200 locals who were asked to take pictures of their surroundings and daily life…a project intended to be empowering for them. The project included a first exposition of the photos in their own towns…the Yi in their big black tri-tipped hats and the Naxi in their blue and white…and it was tear-jerking to see pictures of absolutely delighted people looking at photos of themselves…for many a first experience.

Minorities in China have always been brutally discriminated against by a country that has considered them to be subhuman. But now that the government has discovered that the colorful minorities have become a tourist attraction and can bring money into these areas…all of a sudden they are being given special status. High in the mountains of Guizhou Province, in a tiny Miao town during their New Years celebration, I was told by a young urban Han Chinese college student from Fujian Province that it was his “duty” to volunteer in the local school without pay because he had so much and the farming people here had so little opportunity.

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Alice’s Restaurant At Carnegie

November 27th, 2005

Last night Arlo Guthrie outdid himself in Carnegie Hall 40th anniversary of his song “Alice’s Restaurant.” Updated a little of course! What 50’s and 60’s folkie nostalgia with Pete Seeger (maybe in spirit) in the audience!

Arlo was preceeded onstage by the “Mammals,” a bluegrass band that included his musician son and daughter, who gave us a hilarious refrain about the “Bush Boys” in the long tradition of political folk-singing!

Arlo’s humorous home-spun wisdom and outstanding musicality was worth every penny and a trip into the city!

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Deep Into Mao & China

November 27th, 2005

It’s cold and snowy outside and right now I am deep into the recently published biography of Mao Tse Tung by Jung Chang who also some years ago wrote the respected three-generation epic “Wild Swans.” Jung, born in China, was a Red Guard for a time during the Cultural Revolution and witnessed first-hand the devastation wrought by Mao. She soon after fled to Britain where she was educated. She and her British husband spent 12 years researching the Russian archives and interviewing many of the principal actors of the Cultural Revolution who are still alive.

The book answers my question about why most mainland Chinese still revere Mao after all the devastation he wrought. Apparently, it is because in the absence of a free press he manufactured his persona and made up the whole myth about the Long March (which he fed to the American journalist Edgar Snow who disseminated Mao’s lies in his book “Red Star Over China”) that most people in China still believe in today!

Mao began with no official party status and conscripted local “bandits” that he called an “army.” Then he basically stole a small army from a military commander through blackmail, manipulation and by taking advantage of a technologically ineffective communication system between Shanghai and the rest of China and Moscow where Stalin was pulling the strings. It was by creating an army and by that he was then able to gain credibility and ascend to party leadership. All the while he was carried over snow-covered mountains on a litter by mostly barefoot carriers so he could comfortably read his books.

Meanwhile, Stalin’s top agenda was China’s defeat of the Japanese. Mao’s modus operandi was to lead Stalin into thinking he was following the Soviet line but all the while outmaneuvering Chiang Kai Khek and the Nationalist Army and all other Red factions who were competing for power…no small feat! Moscow bought into Mao’s deception and protected Mao.

Chiang Kai Khek’s nationalist forces had been “chasing” Mao from the south (his wife raised millions of dollars in the U.S. for this war) but let Mao and his “army” go because Stalin was holding Chiang’s son hostage in Moscow. Ironically, for Chiang, the Reds took over China and it took Chiang 11 years to get his son back. As we know, Chiang eventually fled to Taiwan.

Another eye-opening book is the biography of Mao written by his personal physician of 25 years. After Mao died, his physician moved to Chicago near his two sons who had been university educated there. The biography was published just before his death around 1995.

When I was in Bangkok this summer, I gave the biography to a young Chinese woman in her early 20’s who was “visiting her boyfriend.” “He is very fat,” she said laughing, “but he is a very rich Texan!” She was by herself sitting next to me at a sushi bar. Her English was perfect and she was reading a Bangkok travel book in English! Since it is very unusual for mainland Chinese to get out of China alone, I suspect she was there to observe and report back. “Is it true, she asked, “that blacks have group sex?” Astounded, I answered that some may, but people are individuals and you can never say “all” people of an ethnic or racial group do anything! She looked puzzled. We talked for several hours the next morning in a busy coffee shop. I told her I thought Mao was worse than Hitler and she flew off the handle. “My mother (who is a university professor) loves Mao,” she yelled. She also embarrassed me to death in front of the Thais that were present: “I hate Buddah!” she yelled when I asked about Buddhism in China.

Meeting her reminded me of a young mainland Chinese “spy” in Australia who went public about a mainland Chinese spy network that apparently reports on overseas Chinese and asked for asylum when he realized that he had been duped by the Party leadership. Australia, trying to get along with China hesitated but finally gave him temporary asylum (the US refused). He said that if he returned to China he would probably be killed or at least jailed and tortured, a claim that China refuted.

It would have a profound consequence if these books became available to the mainland Chinese. Even better, the Chang book would make an incredible epic movie…and with all the pirated movies in China…it would spread like wildfire among the youth.

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How To Impress The Inlaws

November 27th, 2005

Thanksgiving morning Bob took off for the New York Athletic Club and his ritual Starbucks ice-coffee thinking we would have plenty of time to do the turkey before Amy arrived with her mother who was flying in from Denver at 5pm. Josh had to do turkey at the Tocqueville-his restaurant-of course.

Earlier that day I had watched Oprah make her favorite pomegranate martini so not wanting to miss something good-we indulged. But then Amy brought a bottle of my favorite whiskey-Makers Mark-and of course I had to have a glass or two. This is my excuse for a poor dried-out TG turkey!

Fearing the turkey wouldn’t get done in time I turned up the gas oven which resulted in every ounce of moisture being wrung out of the bird…leaving about three inches of grease and broth in the bottom of the cheezy aluminum pan. When I finally got my wits about me at about 8:30 and decided it was time to get the turkey out, Bob almost set himself on fire when spilled-over grease hit the bottom of the oven.

Thank goodness for Amy’s green-bean dish, her great grandmother’s corn-bread stuffing and her wonderful refrigerated pumpkin roll.

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Thirty-Something Night

November 27th, 2005

Our son, Greg, flew in from Las Vegas for a long weekend last weekend. It is the first time we have been with more than one of the progeny since I can remember…and was great fun…out to dinner at the Pearl Oyster in the West Village after a Staten Island Ferry trip…then a quintessential Manhattan cocktail bar that specializes in Russian vodkas.

Greg met some friends at a velvet rope club (meaning there is a dress code and you have to be accepted in). Amy and Josh, saying it wasn’t their thing, took off to meet some of their friends in a cubby-hole bar for cheap beer and wandered back to the apartment at 5am only to find Greg already asleep. There wasn’t enough room for all of Greg’s party so they split up…not knowing where they were going next. Greg, thinking this was too much work at the ripe old age of 38 had jumped in his own cab and took off for home.

Walking Cobble Hill in Brooklyn we found a “Neighborhoodie” store that sells t-shirts and sweatshirts with custom lettering. Greg had two made…a brown shirt with “Brooklyn Is Better” in baby blue lettering for Amy and a black shirt with “Innocent Bystander” in white. “Oh, but you have to put this under it,” said the young hip female clerk as she showed him a picture of a menacing black Uzi rifle! Which he did.

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Another Country

November 15th, 2005

I knew we were living in a country other than the U. S. A when I dropped into a Dunkin Donut shop (hey it’s been three years!) for a couple sugared donuts. “I’ll have two sugared donuts,” I said to the shop girl. “What?” she asked. “Two sugared donuts,” I repeated. Then again…rather impatiently…”what kind do you want?” Two sugared!” I said again, this time my voice in a slightly higher register. “Oh, shewwwgered!” she said. Usually this only happens in a city where English isn’t the first language…like Bangkok or Bombay…or Rome! But then there is also London…

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New York City Marathon

November 6th, 2005

It’s good to be back “home” in our apartment in Brooklyn from our trip to Washington. Early this morning we walked down a couple blocks to 4th Avenue to watch the NYC marathon runners….after we watched the winners finish on TV…a heart breaker. Fourth avenue seems strange now…empty of runners…full of smashed green paper cups and cop cars.

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“Taxation Without Representation”

November 4th, 2005

Taking a fast sleek train, we are visiting our country’s capitol city for a few days. “Taxation Without Representation” is written at the bottom of D.C. license plates here in the District of Columbia. Don’t know why DC’s fair citizens don’t have any representation in Congress, but we nevertheless enjoy their city.

The weather has been fantastic…sunny, clear and brisk. The trees have become a palette of fall colors. We are staying in a cute little Victorian bed and breakfast called Kalorama Guest House on Mintwood Place NW, (it’s on the web) around the corner from a slew of coffee shops (free internet at Tryst during the week) and ethnic restaurants full of thirty-somethings carrying computer bags and wearing official appearing ID tags. One overheard conversation: “…the working title of my book is The China Wars of 1871…” We think there are a lot of very highly educated people in this city but aren’t sure this is a good thing considering some of the policies coming out of this place.

But alas, our visit will be short. Tomorrow the Red Line of the clean plush subway train will take us from our neighborhood directly to Union Train Station…the most elegant we have seen anywhere in the world except maybe Victoria Station in Bombay..where we will catch our train back to Penn Station in Manhattan.

The gigantic government office buildings remind Bob and I of the utilitarian Nazi-built grey concrete buildings in the eastern sector of Berlin-what used to be East Germany. It occurs to me that at least our tax money hasn’t been spent on hegemonic architecture. But at least a few or more thousand people have jobs in this gigantic bureaucracy.

I spent two days at the National Archives digging up info on my great grandfather who spent 14 months in Confederate prisons, including Andersonville, while Bob roamed the city. We make fun of all the others walking around with cell phones glued to their ears but it’s a darn good thing we have them (cell phones and ears) or we’d still be looking for each other.

Revisionist history: Eisenhower was the first president to send “armed advisors” to Viet Nam. The last time I was in Washington I didn’t notice that the date engraved on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial…1955… was the date indicating the first death. But the pentagon has revised this date twice in the eighties, explained the park service guide…upping it to sometime in the 60’s. But once a date is engraved you just can’t mark it out with a black marker, the guide wryly remarked…

The city, full of irony, was laid out by, of all people, the same Frenchman who designed modern Paris. The J. Edgar Hoover building is exactly across the street from the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building-the two men, of course, hating each other during their tenures. Washington was in the south at the time of the civil war and a bridge crosses the Potomac River, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, to connect the District of Columbia with Arlington Cemetery on land that was given the city by Robert E. Lee.

The Smithsonian Museums, set up by a foreign benefactor, are free and not to be missed. And the residence of the Vice-President was set up on U.S. Naval grounds in order to save taxpayer money by not having to build another palatial home.

But Bob and I looked at each other with not a little bewilderment when the hop-on- hop-off bus driver/tour guide told us that Washington D.C. had more species of trees than any other city in the world. We wondered how they figured this out.

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Odetta

November 1st, 2005

We had been years since we saw Odetta so when Bob read that she would be performing in a Village club we jumped at the chance to get tickets. She walked in dressed in a dramatic multi-colored red and purple silk and velvet gown and head dress…walked in very slowly and with help. She is still her inimitable self…but her weight is down to almost nothing and her songs were confined to softly sung spirituals. She is in her late 70’s and we worried about her health. The middle to late-aged folk-singing crowd laughed though when she cautioned everyone that in this day and age we should all be careful to use condoms!

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Yonah Schimmel’s Knishs

October 25th, 2005

Looking for a restaurant one afternoon on the Lower East Side, we happened by a tiny bakery with huge savory knishes displayed in the window…potato, kasha, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, mixed vegetable, sweet potato, mushroom…and sweet ones too. The glass window was plastered with reviews (apparently this place is famous in New York,) and as I was in the shop making my choices with difficulty, Bob was outside reading one of the reviews which happened to be written in the 60’s!

They ship overnight anywhere in the USA: www.yonahschimmel.com

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“An Uncommon Friendship”

October 25th, 2005

After getting through Phil & Adri’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal that arrive on our stoop every day it is difficult to find time for other reading.

However, Amy’s mom gave me a book I couldn’t refuse. It is a double memoir of the retired general counsel of the Safeway Corporation, Bernat Rosner, whom Debbie worked with before his retirement in 1993, and his friend, Frederic Tubach who is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of California, Berkeley. Bernat Rosner, an Hungarian Jew, and his German friend, discovered after 10 years of friendship that the former was an Auschwitz survivor and the other was the son of a Nazi German Army officer. The memoir is told in his friend’s voice at Mr Rosner’s request.

How to bridge the gulf and remove the power of the past to separate them becomes the focus of their friendship and together they begin the project of remembering. The stories begin with their similar village childhoods before the holocaust and their very different paths to America where they become men with the freedom to construct their own futures.

Poignant, honest, sincere…and proof of what good will can accomplish in the cause of reconciliation.

“An Uncommon Friendship”
Bernat Rosner & Frederic C. Tubach
with Sally Patterson Tubach
University of California Press

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Pierogis In Greenpoint

October 25th, 2005

Around the corner from Josh’s apartment in an almost all-Polish neighborhood Bob and I found an authentic Polish restaurant. Blackboards behind the cashier list items in Polish and English. When our food was ready we carefully delivered it ourselves to our metal 50’s style table. We over-ordered (again) a variety of Polish dishes…pierogis, borsht, cabbage rolls, sausage, meat balls and gravy with mashed potatoes, sliced cucumbers in a vinegar dressing and shredded cabbage salads…all superb. Familiar delicious dishes my first-generation Polish mother often made as I was growing up. We’ll return.

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New York Style

October 24th, 2005

Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in…whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference what your ethnicity is. Young blacks and Hispanics are just as studied only in a different way. Generally, however, clothing ranges from dark to black.

You generally see denim and sneakers on the hip white thirty-somethings walking down 6th Street in Manhattan. The right accessories are de rigueur; it’s definitely a very studied look…it’s about the right jeans paired with the right sneakers and a white iPod in your pocket. For women, it’s levi jeans that can cost up to $500 (but heaven forbid not with a matching levi jacket) or long gathered skirts and an expensive handbag. And cell phones. “Blackberries are viewed as the professional choke-chains preferred by sadomasochistic bosses. And don’t expect to throw on high-waisted Levis and ratty high-tops and pass,” says Lonely Planet guidebook.

The cult of casual is subtle. “One of the draws of this city life is anonymity,” says Lonely Planet, “which is why New Yorkers prefer to mix their designer items back in with their regular clothes so that what they’re wearing doesn’t scream Prada or look like a glorified ad…” The American couple on our Big Onion Tour were wearing what they apparently thought was the New York Uniform…both were in black leather jackets and spendy slacks…both in expensive black leather walking shoes…and were immediately noticeable. They would have fit right in in Paris, however. I remember being remanded a few years ago in a restaurant in southern France while having a polite conversation with a lone woman at the next table who couldn’t figure out, she mused, why Americans wore those dirty sneakers on the streets in New York. You could be wearing a nice black pair of walking shoes she said, as I slowly tried to hide my all-terrain Adidas-covered feet under my table.

“What New Yorkers aren’t nonchalant about is their grooming,” LP goes on to say. “There is a slavish devotion to scubs, cuticles and perfectly coiffed just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. It takes hard work to make that impression of effortlessness.” Who this is referring to, of course, are hip young whites trying to look prosperous on waiter’s tips.

Maybe this is what we need to learn from the thirty-somethings that comprise the median age in New York…studied casualness… Us? Me? Bob?

Posted in Culture, New York City, USA | Comments Off on New York Style

Tags: Culture, New York City, style, USA

Strangers in the “hood”

October 24th, 2005

I’ve never been in a city that has such diverse but tight little neighborhoods. The first question asked by anyone you meet, after what do you do, is where do you live. Soon you know the tenant up the stairs, the cashier on your corner deli and some of your neighbors at the yoga salon on your block..it’s like a little village…you belong…here.

One way to identify the subtleties of a neighborhood is to attend it’s summer street fair. The fair in our neighborhood, called Atlantic Antic, stretched all the way from the Brooklyn Art Museum to the East River…almost two miles. There were the usual food stalls (mostly Soul and Jamaican), beer stations and sidewalk clothing displays (many hand-made African motif). Every 20 feet or so a different music group blasted out African drumming, old-style singing like the Ink Spots of years ago-the vocalists sporting hot pink and lime green jackets, hip-hop, soul, jazz and rock.

There was table after table with information about the local arts activities, local pre-school and kindergarten opportunities, school events, parent organizations, nanny services, environmental concerns, local zoning issues, and all the rest of the latest local political advocacy efforts. Even the candidates for the upcoming New York City mayoral election dropped by. Children everywhere…on backs, on fronts, on shoulders, in strollers, those who could walk running amok. Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village To Raise A Child” has taken on a whole new meaning for me!

Each neighborhood has it’s subtleties. Many of the stalls offered African clothing and jewelry that were hand-made by their sellers. I was trying on a pair of earrings and sharing a mirror with a middle-aged lady in one small stall and suddenly she turns and says to me…”this is so much fun! I just love this fair! Love it! We never have anything fun like this in our neighborhood.” “Where do you live?” I ask. “Queeeeeens,” she grumbled! We both laughed, although I didn’t quite know why I was laughing…I guess just because she was laughing. We haven’t spent much time in Queens yet.

Bob was finished with the fair, however, as soon as he was confronted head-on by a large group of police with a few others circling around behind him. Apparently we had been followed. Bob had been video taping the fair as he walked along…panning the people and stalls of goods along each side of the street. One of the young policemen approached Bob and asked what he was doing here. “What is the problem?” Bob asked, oblivious to any criminal activity. “Why are you taking pictures of this?” as he pointed toward the sidewalk and the buildings. Bob was becoming progressiely nonplussed. The cop said, “that building.” Bob said “what, where?”

We hadn’t even realized we were in front of the Post Office! Bob then explained that he was just panning and video taping the street fair. “You can’t take pictures of public buildings,” the cop said. “Oh, then we aren’t supposed to take pictures of the Empire State Building or Ellis Island or the white house,” Bob thought. Bob, by this time was wondering “why me?” and he was finished with the fair. The last similar confrontation for Bob was in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. But that time the phony cop was after Bob’s wallet. The offense was photographing public buildings (also a post office in Dar).

We are still asking ourselves what it is that is causing people to regard us with suspicion here. I certainly don’t think we fit the typical terrorist profile–but then we are not your typical “local” either. Or maybe there is just some reverse karma regarding postal institutions.

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Tags: Culture, Festivals & Ceremonies, New York City, USA

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