Some time back, near the train platform in our small town, the highway department planted a grove of trees. They are non-fruiting plum trees. They were planted in straight lines and seemed far too close together. I was sure that these little trees would never last. They looked as if they were in an island of loneliness where no one would look after them.

Yet, come the first spring, they were still there and flourishing. Years have passed and not one of them has died and they all perform their same ritual of blossoming and shedding each year. Noticing this pattern, I started to feel empathy for these “ladies.” I had decided by then that they were ladies. Why? Well, they put on their best finery every spring. They cover themselves with light pink blossoms but then, by May, their blossoms have fallen off and they are wearing the dark plum-coloured leaves that they will have through summer and into the fall. Come winter, they will lose their leaves and stand barren until the next spring. Year in and year out, the pattern never varies.

Then, one day I realized something about these ladies. Their dusky leaves look a lot like changeable silk taffeta. This fabric was very popular around the 1860s. It shines and appears to change colour as the garment moves. It comes in many colours, but around the time of the Civil War it came in a grey and a plum colour that were particularly popular. The ladies, I decided, were women who were waiting for their men to come home from the war. They get their hopes up every spring and wait by the train platform in their best pink finery. But, as April fades into May, and their soldiers don’t return; their pretty pink gowns are discarded. They put on their widows weeds of plum-coloured leaves. As winter approaches, with all hope gone, they stand there ragged. The rains come and go, the winter winds press against their limbs, and the widows keep their vigil.

Why Gaithersburg? Because it was a crossroads during the Civil War. Many a Confederate soldier left there, never to return. So, these are the widows of Gaithersburg. A small town still, no longer just a crossroads; but these widows with no fruit borne, await their Johnny Reb’s return and change their clothes as their hopes rise and fade.

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

And, of course

(hewa ni hataraki: work for peace)

I had been waiting for the Italian election to be decided before I wrote about it, and as of Saturday afternoon it appears the deadlock has been broken. Silvio Berlusconi has said that he will resign and Romano Prodi has his speaker of the senate, Franco Marini. This was only after 4 parliamentary votes that gave the Prodi coalition its first real test. But let’s go back a few weeks to the election itself.

I was in Italy during the election with the HB. We had travelled by train from Vienna and arrived in time for the election. It was an exciting time. There were election pamphlets everywhere. No windshield wiper or rear window was free of them. We were in Tuscano, in Firenze specifically. There were no Berlusconi supporters to be found in Toscano. Everyone from the taxi drivers to the hotel staff were Prodi supporters.

If Toscano had been reflective of all of Italy, Romano Prodi would have won by a landslide. Italy, however, is a fractious country. Italians have never really ever believed that it is anything more than the city-states that for so long defined it. That is why, when you tell someone from Villareggio that you had good lasagne in Pisa he will reply quizzically, “You had good lasagne in Pisa?!?” It may seem minor, but it is emblematic of the Italian psyche.

So, we knew better than to hope for a landslide; that would never happen in Italy. But, we had never expected the election to be as close as it was. Prodi’s coalition won by an incredibly narrow margin. To give Silvio credit, the outcome was in doubt for several days. That said, he really should have given it up a lot sooner. But then, Silvio has never been known for having a keen sense of logic, or irony.

This is the man who said that he was giving up sex for the election period. He also compared himself to Christ in the travails he’s had to face. He went on to state that anyone who didn’t vote for him was an unprintable Italian scatological word for a part of the human anatomy (yes, that’s redundant). (more…)

I’ve been away for a few weeks. I was in Vienna (Wien) and then Florence (Firenze). I had always said that I wouldn’t go to Austria as long as Jörge Haider was still drawing a breath, but I had a need to see Klimt and Schiele. So, off I went to Wien.

Wien was decimated during the Second World War (see: The Third Man) and it didn’t profit by its reconstruction. There are rows upon rows of ugly concrete apartment blocks. As I looked out of my hotel window, I realized once again that many people don’t care where they live. Or perhaps it’s that they can’t afford to care. We don’t all have a real choice as to our living arrangements.

Wien has its charms. Stadt Park and the Hofburg Quarter are two. It certainly has good food and lots of it. It has some of the most dramatic skies in the world. It’s exciting to watch the weather move through. Yet, somehow I kept thinking of that saying, “How clever those Austrians, they’ve made the world think that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German.”

There is a lively art scene in Wien, and the museums are top notch; but I kept wanting to stop old men and ask them what they did in the war. I had this same desire in Spain every time I saw an old man wearing a beret. “Whose side were you on?” In Spain no one would ever own up to having heard of Franco, so I couldn’t engage anyone in a discussion about him. This is why I should never go to places like Austria, Germany, Poland, or anyplace that capitulated or conspired with the Nazis. Of course, that would put most of Europe off limits for me. So, it’s best I don’t think about it. (more…)

Why do some people have a problem with death? I don’t mean the concept of it, though admittedly that may be where the problem lay. No, I’m taking about the simple concept of expressing to someone that a person has died.

I may have to scream if I hear again, “he/she passed on” or sometimes this is shortened to “he/she passed.” Passed what? Wind? A note? Or merely passed by? I don’t get it. Why are we so leery of stating that someone is dead?

This is not a metaphysical question. I’m not questioning the concept of heaven and/or hell. Faith is not a part of my complaint here. It’s just that dead is dead. A person’s spirit lives on (whether we like it or not), but that body is dead, dead, dead.

After my mother died, I was speaking to a friend form high school days and she asked about mum, “She’s dead,” I answered. “Oh, Anon, how could you just say that?” friend asked. “’Cause she is. Did you want me to say the she ‘passed on’?” “Well, it’s just that ‘dead’ is so final, so cold.” “I’m sorry, I’m not getting this. Are you saying that my mum isn’t dead?” “No, it’s just so, I don’t know, final.” (more…)

There are many things that are just ‘human.’ We all need to love. We all need to hope that there’s a tomorrow. We all need to laugh. We all have times when tears are all we have to express ourselves. And yet for all those things that we have in common; our cultures create chasms between otherwise amiable human beings.

Sometimes it’s a hegemonic encounter. As Masami Teraoka demonstrated in his series of drawings about the effects of American culture on Japanese culture; it can be more than jarring. It can distort or even destroy an ancient culture.

Then, there is the other problem of emigration. The newly arrived immigrant can find it hard to maintain those things that defined his/her culture. Often this becomes so difficult that assimilation is the preferred option. Then, the old culture becomes an artefact. Like a song that you can’t quite remember the lyrics to, it fades in and out of the assimilated person’s consciousness. After a generation or two, the old song is often lost. (more…)

I’ve never been one for making New Year’s resolutions. I am an inveterate list-maker. Throughout the year I constantly make lists. Since I don’t see myself as being at all disciplined, I am always gobsmacked when I actually complete all the tasks on my latest to-do list. Not that I do always manage that.

This last year was a case in point. I finished most tasks, but farted about with the most important task of all: I didn’t finished revising a book. I meant to, I wanted to, I even made headway with it; but when it came down to it I didn’t finish it. It has assumed the top spot on this year’s first list. It’s like a big blot in my copybook and every time I go back to that page I can see it. (more…)

This has been yet another annus horribilis. Starting with Boxing Day 2004, Mother Nature has shown us, lest we forget, who’s in charge. From earthquakes to tsunamis to hurricanes and floods; we look weak and our responses have been inadequate on every level.

Our bodies politic have been shaken to the core. Don’t feel that it’s just your system that’s in turmoil: institutions everywhere have been tested and found wanting.

Our faith in those who would lead us has been shaken to the core. Those in power abuse those fragile rights that we, the governed, have always been told are inalienable. Those out of power seem unable to find their way out of the desert. Their voices are discordant when they need to speak as one.

So, where does that leave us? If we have seen the enemy and he is us; then we need to look inward for the answer to what ails us. The human experiment evolves, but it’s based on one basic premise: we must care for one another to survive.

Hobbes said that we must make sacrifices to live inside the leviathan. We give up those freedoms to do as we wish in order that our lives will not be, “short, nasty and brutish.” We can live out our existences inside the leviathan because we are inside. But in order for the experiment to work, we can’t atomize ourselves: e pluribus Unum. And that whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Here’s to the good ship of state and all those sail in her. May the seas be calm in her wake. May the wind fill her sails. May the setting sun see her safely home.

I was just watching “Rashomon” again. Our separate realities is a theme I keep returning to in my meanderings. It lives side by side with my view of human relations as an existential exercise: we create our realities.

In “Rashomon,” whose story was true? The thief, the wife, the husband? Was the woodsman, in the end, telling the true story, even though we find out that he’s a thief? Or, did they each create their own reality because that was what each of them could live with? In statistical analysis, triangulation gives a semblance of the reality behind the numbers. In “Rashomon,” there is no triangulation. It’s true that the thief and woodsman both say the thief killed the husband. But, is that just what conforms to what they each need to be the truth? (more…)

I haven’t taken the Christmas decorations out yet. I’m thinking that I won’t. This year I can’t seem to find my Christmas spirit. Oh, I gave to Médecins sans Frontières. I bought gifts for the children. I’ve made and sent the cards long ago. But I haven’t bought a tree and I don’t intend to this year.

Maybe next year, maybe. So, I’ve been looking at Christmas’ past. Check out that little gingerbread man. Doesn’t he look cheery? It snowed on Christmas Eve that year. I had wanted snow and everyone had said, “Oh, it doesn’t snow here at Christmas.” But, it did snow for me. I was a child again. I put on my wellies and long johns and ran down the road in the snow. There wasn’t a lot of it; just enough for snow angels, but it was my snow. That Christmas no one could deny me my happiness or my snow.

(more…)

All rights girls and boys; it’s time for another lesson in statistics. Remember, statistics are a wonderful tool, but only if you know how to interpret them. You can’t depend on the interpretation by news writers. People who write the articles accompanying stats, for the most part, aren’t statisticians. So, you should be aware of a few fundamental things first.

As I said the other day, the best polls are the large well-funded polls. These polls besides having the best-trained folks running them, they can afford a decent size sample (≈1,000 to 1,500 respondents). There’s one more thing to be considered: if these people get it wrong, it’s noticed by everyone and the poll is not trusted the next time. Don’t believe me? Do you remember the VNS exit poll that predicted that Al Gore had won the 2000 election? The VNS no longer exists.

Another thing I mentioned was history effects. This graph shows how history effects have affected George W. Bush’s approval ratings. Approval ratings are subtle things. When Bill Clinton was impeached, people said that they didn’t trust him on a personal level. But the public never felt that Bill couldn’t do his job. Clinton’s approval ratings never dipped far below 50%. (more…)