Remembering James Hormel

James Hormel

James Hormel died this year. 

Many good people died this year - Colin Powell, Desmond Tutu, Ed Asner, Olympia Dukakis, Cloris Leachman, just to name a few of those I admired and respected - and the year's not over yet. But as we exercise our annual habit of remembering the folks who went on before us this year, I want especially to remember James Hormel.

James Hormel was 88 years old and his wife Michael Peter Nguyen Araque is around 55-58 years old.

That's a headline from 101Biography.com, a site that keeps track of the lives of "trending" people, i.e., the rich and famous we mere mortals like to gawk at and trash or put on a pedestal, as the spirit moves us - a gossip site, not one to fuss over. Except that, in this case, Michael Araque is a man, and was James Hormel's husband, not his wife.

Even in death, this marvelous man, James Hormel, gets messed with or misunderstood, and we are reminded that the long hard struggle he engaged in for the rights of LGBT people isn't over yet. Even in relatively enlightened corners of the planet like the U.S., where gays like me live lives immeasurably better than we dreamed of as young people - thanks in great measure to the likes of James Hormel.

I first took notice of him not for all the contributions he made to the cause of improving the lives of LGBT people - that came later - but when President Bill Clinton appointed him as ambassador to Luxembourg and all the rats came out of the woodwork. 

When you hear "Hormel" you may find yourself thinking of spam. The meat, not the junk that invades your inbox. His grandfather made a fortune grinding up meat parts and putting them into cans, and James inherited the family fortune - which enabled him to contribute big time to Clinton and thus get rewarded with the cushiest of ambassadorial appointments - Luxembourg.

Hormel was born in 1933, a year indistinguishable from the dark ages for gay people, the year Hitler took power, the height of the depression, when a quarter of Americans were out of work, when winds were blowing the topsoil from American farmland and creating the Dust Bowl, when gangsters ran Chicago, when the gatling gun, which could fire 1000 rounds a minute and would help the slaughters that were to come in the Second World War possible, was invented.

I like to think that Hormel was a piece of the antidotes to that series of horrors, along with the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, which started that year. And the election of FDR. He would, of course, have to endure a vicious age of homophobic bigotry, seven more years than I did, in the end. And, unlike me, he went with the flow, married a woman he loved and made a happy family. When he died, he had helped create five children, fourteen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. When he died, his former wife, Alice, shared the podium with his gay partner to remember him fondly. One can do worse than live a life that ends with that kind of display of affection. 

If I were a more generous sort, I'd stop here and comfort myself with the cliché that all's well that ends well. But I also have a great respect for history. I don't want the world to forget that while Michelle Obama is all kissy-face with George W. Bush, he is in my mind a war criminal, a man who smeared Colin Powell's sterling reputation for integrity and loyalty by pressing him into helping us lie our way into bombing Iraq and killing hundreds of thousands in a futile attempt to make the world better for imperial America. 

And I don't want the world to forget that when Hormel's ambassadorship was announced, the only way Clinton could get the appointment to go through was to do it when the Republicans in the Senate were out of town. And that Fiji was the first choice, but didn't want a gay man to come to town as ambassador. And the Catholic Church, singing out of tune, as they so often do, insisted the good catholic folk of Luxembourg would feel the same way. Fortunately, Clinton overrode those objections, Luxembourg officials welcomed his appointment, and it went through. But in the meanwhile, Hormel had to endure delay thanks to the efforts of conservative Senators Jesse Helms and John Ashcroft, and three other Republicans, James Inhofe, Tim Hutchinson, and Bob Smith. Trent Lott, the Republican Majority Leader, worked to block the vote and publicly and called homosexuality a sin, comparing it to alcoholism and kleptomania. 

Hormel was, among other things, a smart fellow. He graduated from Swarthmore and then Chicago Law School and ended up dean at Chicago, and director of admissions. He was one of the founders, in 1981, of the Human Rights Campaign. He was a member of the 1995 United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the 1996 U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, and the boards of directors of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He funded the creation of James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library in 1995, a priceless collection of materials documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history and culture, with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area.

For that last bit he was criticized by the homophobes because those materials contained information about NAMBLA, the man-boy organization. Never mind that he had no say in which materials the library would choose to include, or the fact that those same materials are in the Library of Congress.

He was a big supporter of People for the American Way.  He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal Award by San Francisco Pride Board of Directors.

He broke the mold. Since his time, President Biden has appointed Chantale Wong to be the director of the Asian Development Bank - that's an ambassador-rank position if I'm not mistaken. And then there's Pete Buttigieg in the Biden cabinet.

We're getting there. Very slowly. But surely.

I hope we don't fail to remember the rungs on the ladder.

Like James Hormel.

photo credit

Covidiots

I've shared many times with friends the notion that if I were a German I would be a member of the SPD, the German Socialist Party. It's the oldest political party in Germany. I was drawn to the socialists early on not just because I think at the top of the list of America's problems is the lack of a fair distribution of wealth (on both moral and practical political grounds) but because I so admired the person of Willi Brandt and wanted to be associated with men and women of his stature.

Willi Brandt went way beyond most resistors to Hitler. He actually emigrated to Norway and joined the anti-German forces fighting the Nazis, changing his name from the original Herbert Frahm to Willi Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents (he made the change official in 1948 after the war.) He, like Marlene Dietrich and others who actively fought the Nazis from abroad, made many enemies among people who thought resistance to Hitler was appropriate, but still felt that joining enemy forces was unworthy, if not actual treason. (Think Jane Fonda and the Vietnam War.) Despite that resistance from the right wing, Brandt was elected chancellor of Germany in 1969. He had also been mayor of Berlin for a time.

 
What clinched it for me as a fan of his was his "Kniefall" - the time he fell on his knees when laying a wreath at the memorial to the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1970. I remember watching it on television in Japan and being moved to tears. His comment on the act later was, "At the abyss of German history and under the weight of millions of murdered people, I did what people do when language fails." A Japanese leader, I understand, copied the act years later when recognizing Japan's incursion into Korea. He got the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring east and west together, always with strong opposition from the right. I love it that in America right-wingers would slap the label socialist on him, and miss the irony that this time they'd be right on.

The Socialist Party in Germany ran into some hard times recently before picking themselves up and winning the chancellorship again, with Olaf Scholz, in the last election, albeit in coalition with the Green Party (good show) and the libertarians (not so good show).

I have noted before, also, my admiration for Kevin Kühnert, the young guy who dropped out of college to head up the Young Socialists (Jusos). He's at the extreme left, opposed Scholz initially for being too far right, and advocates such things as not allowing people to own more than one house. He's now a member of the Bundestag for the district of Tempelhof/Schöneberg in Berlin. And here I show my bias. I like gay people who are smart and have an active social conscience. I love it that in the U.S. we didn't stop with Barney Frank, but have now even got a gay man in the president's cabinet. Germany's previous Health Minister was also a friend of Dorothy's.

But I'm getting carried away here. And being LGBT does not always signal a social conscience, alas - consider that Alice Weidel is one of the leaders of the AfD, for example. But I just wanted to endorse young Kevin in passing.

The two actual leaders (I don't know how they divide up the work) of the Socialist Party (it's actually not "socialist" but "democratic socialist" and even Kühnert calls himself a democratic socialist) are Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken. I really like these two politicians, as well.

Esken got into trouble last year for referring to the anti-vaxxers and Querdenkers opposed to masking and distancing as "Covidiots" on Twitter and the Berlin Attorney General's office reviewed the charges. They then dismissed them, arguing that as a German citizen she had a right to free speech.

My pro-German sympathies continue apace as long as these people are in charge.

Tokyo recognizes same-sex unions; Chile goes one better

OK. I'll march in the parade.

Why not? I don't want to be one of those glass-half-empty types, people who see the dark side of things before begrudgingly admitting there is cause for celebration and blowing out the happy candles.

At the same time, I can't deny that "a same-sex partner system (sic)" is not something I want to jump up and down over. Much less wait another year for.

The city of Tokyo has just announced that it will recognize same-sex unions, along with five other prefectures (Tokyo is a 'city-state').

And, as if to further call attention to the johnny-come-lately feature of such legislation, Tokyo's governor, Yuriko Koike explains the rationale this way: "It will help alleviate problems in daily life and promote the understanding of gender diversity in Tokyo."

Why do I feel like somebody's offering me crumbs? Why must I stand, hat in hand, like Oliver, and beg, "Please, sir, may I have some more?"

I hear you, fellow LGBT people who have fought so long and so hard to get this far. You want me to be grateful for the progress in this fundamentally socially conservative nation. You want to sing and dance, pop the champagne corks, maybe shoot off a few firecrackers. I apologize if I'm raining on your parade.

When I went to Tokyo for the first time, in 1970, I had to go back into the closet as a gay man. Had to recognize that the (relatively) gay-friendly world I had left behind in San Francisco was not the same world I was coming into. It took a bit of adjusting before I realized Japan was not all that bad. It had, like many places colonized culturally by the Christian West, taken on a homophobia not native to the islands. I remember my minister of the church I grew up in explaining to us once that when he went to Japan with the occupation forces they had a hell of a time convincing the Japanese not to strip in the aisles and get into their pajamas before climbing into bed in the sleeper trains. "They have no shame," he explained, mournfully.

And once the occupation was over, and Japan was free to go its own way again, the homophobia lingered. Today (i.e., 1970) to be openly gay was the equivalent of shouting obscenities while walking down the public streets. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly not the kind of thing nice people do. Here too, I was faced with being a grouch for pointing that out, though, rather than recognizing that while I was able to be more open about being gay in San Francisco, in Japan I didn't have to worry that if I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time I might be met by a bunch of thugs insecure enough about their sexuality to want to beat the daylights out of me. In fact, the fact that viewing being gay as little more than bad taste was probably the reason Japan saw no need for what we saw as gay liberation, and the reason it has taken another half century for this day to arrive, when lesbians and gays can be granted a "system" - marriage will surely come in time - for going through life with a same-sex life-partner.

So yes, I'll march in the parade. And yes, I'll toast the progress. And yes, I'm delighted to see Japan take a step closer to Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay in recognizing the right for same-sex couples to marry. Some of these countries have less than full equal access to the institution of marriage in some parts of them, but all of them show Japan there is more they can do to give lesbians and gays a way out of second-class status as citizens of a democracy.

In the meantime, yes, I'll march in the parade. I'll carry a sign. I'll look on the bright side and stress the fact that not only are there more ways to achieve civic equality than we are currently taking advantage of, there are indications that we're on our way to getting there. And we should not surrender (I'm obviously addressing myself here) to the temptation of snarking over what isn't to the point that we miss what is.

One day in 1861 Russia was a country made up of large numbers of serfs. The next day Tsar Alexander freed them. At one point in the history of the United States people of color were slaves. Some day in the future, legislators will stop trying to remove their right to vote. Things take time.

photo credit

and P.S., while I was focusing on these small steps in Japan, a bigger story was happening across the big blue waters in Chile: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/world/americas/chile-gay-marriage.html

The anti-vaxxer plague

One of my Bill-friends (I have several of them) just sent me a link to a Guardian article on the German and Austrian weakness for what I call homeopathic silliness, and others call thinking outside the box. It's worth a read.

The past couple of weeks I've been preoccupied with the news from Germany. The number one topic is Covid and the number two topic, what will the new government be like, usually ends up centering on Covid, as well.

In my personal life, I find myself fighting despair over all the evidence that Americans, to an alarming degree, have surrendered to fear, circus, and conspiracy theories, and I have looked to Germany to pick my spirits up. Their approach to science and truth has long been a counterbalance to American folly, for me. That is no longer the case. I now find myself reflecting over and again on how similar the two populations are.

In the midst of this struggle to juggle each new piece of insight into German and American behavior and thought, I am deeply saddened by the fact that I've lost a friend over my approach to taking things in. He insists Americans are fools, plain and simple, and there is no such thing as an honest politician. I've lost his friendship over protests that he focuses too little on the donut, too much on the hole. I persist in thinking - it's my reaction to despair - that we should live by the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant, that none of us ever see the whole picture. And I conclude from that that we can be our own worst enemies by believing we know more than we do, that we need to keep nuanced thinking at all costs, and not throw in the towel prematurely on what appears to be ingrained folly as a national characteristic.

This is a philosophical orientation, and it's based on faith, something I rail loudly against much of the time. I don't like ideological thinking, but at the same time I recognize I cannot rid myself of the notion that the insane, the Republicans, the Christian nationalists, the white supremacists - carve out whichever section of the population you will, are running the asylum. My friend's ghosting of me is ironic. I actually agree with him much of the time. We're all doomed if we go on like this!

Particularly discouraging is the fact that while I want to focus on the John Lewises and the Pete Buttigiegs and the Stacey Abramses and all the many politicians standing up to American political folly and not let the Ted Cruzes and the Rand Pauls and Ron De Santises stand in as representative, I feel the left has pulled the rug out from under me. In the U.S., our tendency to tout individual rights over collective responsibilities is a chronic disease.  A co-morbidity with the Corona virus, this anti-vaxxer ("I got my rights!") nonsense. And in Germany, particularly in Saxony and Thuringia, where they are still fighting the ghost of intrusive statism, the mistrust of government spills over into mistrust of science. Otherwise decent, smart people are ignoring what I take to be common sense medical advice. They are not listening to the clear consensus. Even as Angela Merkel is celebrated and praised for her "steady hand" and "desire to get everybody around the table" she's criticized for inaction in preparing the country for the pandemic. One can't win for losing on that front.

And what can we do other than stand by and hope we continue to survive long enough to gain even more benefit of hindsight. Those who listened to the business sector and opened things up at the earliest sign the pandemic was waning now have egg on their face. They are now justifiably criticized for failing to realize a drop in the number of Covid cases was only seasonal and would rise again, and opening up too soon would lead to disaster. We know that now from the German example. But, as Merkel is fond of reminding us, "You can't do much without a majority."

Watching the debates on German television, watching politicians and social analysts rage at each other over their different approaches to fixing things, is heartbreaking sometimes. We simply lack the ability to see the future, and we make bad policy all the time. It's not that the Germans are stupid for being anti-vaxxers, as so many of them are; it's not that Americans are stupid for not being able to see that collective responsibility is as important as individual freedom. It's that the human race is lousy at long-term thinking. The chief freedom of democracy, I've always believed, is the freedom to be stupid. We see that in that marvelous assertion, "I disagree with you totally, but I'll fight to the death for your freedom to express yourself." But at the moment, in a life-and-death situation, we see the advantage of enlightened, as opposed to democratic, rule. It's a time to be smart, not a time to be free.

Let me restate that. It's time to remind ourselves that our right to swing our fists stops at the end of your nose.

I'm with Jeanette

For all you train buffs and lovers of all things San Francisco,  let me suggest you might enjoy watching the history of the MUNI and BART systems in San Francisco from their beginnings to the present day.

Without one or both of those obsessions (I have both), this could be the most boring video you've ever seen.

But it brought back for me all the sense of thrill I felt when I first discovered San Francisco in 1962, and expanded on it in the years 1965 to 1970 before moving to Japan for the first time. I once thought the perfect job for me would be driving a cab in San Francisco. I knew all the downtown streets and was working with a map to extend that knowledge into the residential areas.

That fascination never entirely faded away, but it did get greatly diluted once I parted ways with the city itself in the 24 years I lived in Japan and came back with regularity to my house in Berkeley - not the city itself - which I bought 26 years ago.

But I'm an old man now and I get to live with memories of terrifying visitors to the city by pretending to be Steve McQueen and racing up and down the hills behind the cable cars and treating the city as a lover would treat a loved one, singing its praises and just hanging out, wanting to be close and intimate.

That San Francisco is long gone, except in my imagination. It stopped being the city of white buildings built on hills where one's favorite pastime was running from one hilltop view to another sometime in the 70s and 80s when it gave itself over to becoming Manhattan West and the downtown became more shade and shadows than sunlight. And today it's a city of super rich technocrat spillovers from Silicon Valley and a poster boy for American homelessness. American lack of equity in a microcosm.

I can't walk much anymore - getting up the hill to my dentist's office on Sutter Street from the Powell St. Station is about all I can muster, and I've now decided I have to give up even that and take the Stockton Bus up from Market to where it turns into the Stockton Tunnel, a sad reality of growing old.

But I know I'm not alone. There are others out there who once found San Francisco a magical city - and there have got to be some out there who still do.

For me, this review of the development of the streetcar and BART lines brought back years of affection for the place. It's still there. Not what it was to me in my early years of living on my own for the first time, of coming out in a warm and welcoming environment, (well, relatively speaking...) and of the discovery that it wasn't just Europe that could create magnificent cities. But still a place to make my heart go thumpety-thump when Jeanette McDonald gets up to sing.

In any case, for you train buffs and San Francisco lovers out there, a nice little history lesson for when you tire of Icelandic horror detective fiction on Netflix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HDnn1t9_p8

Are you even legal?

My friend Bill from Arkansas doesn't simply keep track of his ancestors; he travels far and wide to pore over civil and parish records of his great greats and his family tree has a rich set of branches indeed.

I was greatly amused the other day of his tale of an Irish priest who took it upon himself to protect the reputation of unnamed illegitimate children from centuries back in his parish. Bill had gone to County Kilkenny to track down a great-grandmother and was told he would not be allowed to see the church records because he might reveal information about illegitimate births. Bill then added that he had had a similar experience in Germany where the records actually showed the birth of a "Hurensohn" (son of a whore). Bill, being a generous sort, speculated this might have been just the normal word of the day for illegitimate, and perhaps didn't carry the sting later generations might read into the term. The German language, after all, can be quite direct. My grandmother had no trouble designating the outhouse we had to use back in the dark ages as the "Scheisshaus" - the shit house.

As for the"son of a whore" designation, I can only speculate, of course, but since I don't know a soul who gives a hoot whether somebody born 150 years ago was legit or not, his protest does make me sit up and take notice. How almost delightful. How quaint.

But what's this priest's game? He could, of course, be being straight with folk and telling the truth - that he honestly feels an obligation to protect parishioners' reputations. But one cannot fail to take note of his inclination (instinct?) to cover up potential scandals. How very clergy-like of him, the little voice in my head says. It's also possible he's just got an overly inflated view of his job and likes to show his power by not letting you have what you're asking for. That's a real possibility, since he did give in in the end and let Bill have a look at potential evidence of shame and disgrace.

Another thought this tale brings to mind is the evidence of the means the church has to maintain social control, how it wrested control away from civil authority to determine who is married and who is not, thus assuring that money would flow more readily into church coffers from people wanting to grease the skids and get on with it.

There is, of course, another possible explanation for making an issue of legitimacy, and that is a simple inclination to think and act bureaucratically, and this time I mean without really considering any moral reason for posing the question. Many people inclined to keep the world in order, when they find blanks, earnestly believe those blanks must necessarily be filled in whenever and wherever possible.

Back in 1960, when I went abroad to study, no sooner was I assigned to a room in a Lutheran dormitory in Munich than the house-mother informed me that I needed to register my residence with the police.  As a born-free American, this seemed like government overreach, but I was still barely twenty and in no position to stand up to what seemed like a police state obligation. A German police state, no less. It was still years before the Vietnam War and I had no idea that people sometimes protested authority, so I found the local gendarmerie and got in line. The place was crowded and I had to wait my turn to appear before a police officer sitting high and mighty at a counter I could barely see over.

Name? he asked me.  

Date of birth? 

I told him I was born on May 14, 1940.

Legitimate or illegitimate?

I will remember that question as long as I live.  "Ehelich oder unehelich?"

I went home and immediately wrote my mother and father a thank-you note for marrying before I was born.

Why did they need to know that? I was just doing my duty and registering my residence, so that the police would know where I lived. Why did they need to know?

A clue to the reasoning came in the very next question, after I mumbled "ehelich," (the word glosses in English to "marriagely" by the way), looking at all the people standing around me within earshot.

"Where were you on September 1, 1939?"

With this question the interrogation moved from surprising to almost sinister.

If I had had my wits about me, I would have answered, "In my mother's womb." Didn't the idiot just hear me say I was born eight months after that date?

But I wasn't thinking; I was simply being dutiful and answering any and all questions the policeman was putting to me. And he, obviously, was not much of a deep thinker, either.

Somebody informed me that in those days, merely fifteen years after war's end, they were still keeping track in Germany of where everybody came from.  Tons of people - we called them "DPs" - displaced persons - had poured across the border when Russia grabbed the eastern part of Poland and Poland followed suit and took a huge chunk of Germany in restitution for the misery Germany had inflicted on them. Including the plot of land my Tante Frieda's relatives had buried the family jewels in, by the way, but that's a story for another day.

My point is just that here was an official simply going down the list of questions his job required him to ask in case anybody in authority ever needed to come find me.

There are so many times when people wish for "the good old days." I never do. I would, of course, love to go back in time - provided, of course, I could take the knowledge I have in my head today with me. What an opportunity it would be to right wrongs and avoid missed opportunities. But then there are those occasions like this when you remember that one could be labeled illegitimate and have that fact entered on your public records. I'll stay right here in the present, if it's all the same to you.

When I was a kid I had a great uncle who was a farmer in Nova Scotia. When he didn't like people, he didn't call them SOBs or bastards, as we did in Connecticut. He called them "sons o' whores."

That's what my friend Bill found on these church records as literal designations for children born out of wedlock. Never mind that some poor servant girl had to submit to the lust of her employer and bear any children that came of the moment. She got to be called a whore, to boot. And have that designation entered next to her name in the public record - sometimes even upside down, to rub it in - for some casual passer-by generations hence from America to discover one day.

Sometimes things really do get better.

Squid Game

Netflix is moving ahead big time. It's right up there now with other agencies that blur the line between popular culture and corporate power, like Facebook, Amazon, Google and Youtube, all natural-born children of the internet. This latest contribution to the phenomenon of bingeing shows that it has made a brilliant move in terms of commercial success by expanding beyond the borders of the U.S. and of the English-speaking world. Squid Game is a local Korean production that has exploded into the largest-selling Netflix streaming offering of all time.

The question is why, and I don't have the answer. It won't surprise me to see reviews and commentary popping up that go on about the fall of civilization. Squid Game is about people in Korea who have fallen on hard times and are recruited into playing a series of games which, if they win, will provide them with a fortune. And if they lose, they will be shot and killed. Or dropped from a great height and killed. Or killed in bloody face-to-face encounters by their friends and loved ones.

It is listed as a horror film. I think that's the wrong category to place it in.  A more appropriate label for the genre, I think, would be sadism.

Intellectually, you can come to its defense and claim it's too artfully made, too original, to be reduced to sadism pure and simple. It can be seen as a satire of capitalism, where some people are reduced to abject poverty and others get so rich that wealth comes to bore them and the only way they can entertain themselves when their cars and yachts and bigger houses no longer satisfy, and their need for novelty is so inflated, is to watch people they see as losers claw and club each other to death over money. 

If you have never given serious thought to the mentality of ancient Rome, where rulers kept their people under control by "bread and circus," circus being watching the losers of society being eaten alive by lions, now's your chance to direct your thoughts in that direction.  If you've never marveled at the willingness of one gladiator to hack off the limbs of other gladiators, ask yourself why. How have we managed to avoid the cynicism out there that makes us see all human life as little more than a casual encounter between those lucky enough to get ahead and those who, through physical or mental weakness, or simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are randomly selected for destruction?

All morally justified by the possibility that a good performance can be rewarded with a "thumbs up" that will release the victim from the fate of death.

The question I'd like answered is this one. Is Squid Game being watched because people appreciate its original approach to satire? - it's nothing if not original. Or because we have arrived at the same place the Romans did when they set up the Colosseum to entertain themselves by watching other people suffer and die? There might well be a third or fourth possibility, but at the moment, I can't for the life of me think what that might be.

One can't help marveling at the fact that Squid Game starts off with a warning that the film shows people smoking. And at the fact that it is being watched all over the world by large audiences and that people are buying costumes worn by the guards who shoot the game losers to wear at Hallowe'en, that nobody seems too concerned that in a satire on capitalism, the promoters are boasting of the profits the series is bringing to the investors at Netflix. You can't make this stuff up.

I contributed to this exercise in absurdity. I went back and watched the whole nine episodes after getting into a discussion with friends who were wondering what it was all about and why it was getting so much traction. I decided I needed to know what the hullabaloo was all about. I had earlier turned it off after one episode, not just because of the violence, but because I really hate the histrionic Korean style of acting which involves shouting at the top of your lungs, pushing your face into all sorts of contortions, groveling on the ground when asking for favors and other examples of a lack of irony and subtlety. Not my cup of tea. Nothing against Koreans. Maybe there is plenty of subtlety in Korean theatre and I've just been looking at the wrong stuff. But Squid Game did nothing to alter my biased view, if that's what it is. In fact, it has set it back years.

There are other things wrong with the story. Clumsy plot line, things that don't make sense. But spending time critiquing them is on the same level as warning viewers they might encounter smoking in any given episode where they will witness characters they've come to care for get a bullet to the forehead.

By all means watch it so you'll be able to join in when it comes up as a topic. If you've seen slasher films and are, like most people today, inured to blood and violence, have at it. And do tell me, please, if you think I've got this take all wrong.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

photo credit: this image is all over the place, and I can't find the original source. Sorry. It depicts the contestants in green uniforms trying to solve a puzzle. The figures in red are the guards ready to shoot them if (and, in most cases, when) they fail.

Pflicht

Growing up semi-bilingual - my German never actually reached the level of my English - I learned early on that certain words are difficult to translate. You can get the general idea, the denotation, across. But the connotations often don't survive the transfer. The expression "lost in translation" is not an idle notion.

In later years, after I had spent years in Japan and acquired a better than entry-level familiarity with the Japanese language, I added other untranslatables to the pile. "Ikenai" - literally "that doesn't go" - for example. Mothers say that all the time to their kids. A translation that gets a little closer to the Japanese might be "People don't do that!" In Japan - at least in the Japan I first got to know half a century ago - the importance of not looking bad in the eyes of your neighbors carried a hell of a lot more weight than it did in other places I had spent any length of time. I might even make an argument that when a mother says "ikenai" to her kids, what she's actually saying is "don't you dare embarrass me in the eyes of everybody we know."

"Komaru" is another of those words. In my head, I hear "I am having a hard time with this." It's a verb with a very broad semantic range. It covers everything from distressed to troubled to inconvenienced to embarrassed and at a loss. When it's time to harness the dogs for a walk, and they fail to line up fast enough to satisfy my Japanese husband's sense of proper dog behavior, he scolds them with "Komaru yo!" (I am "komaru!")

From my German grandmother, I learned such concepts as "Ordnung" - "order" - as in "Ordnung muss sein!" - "there must be order."  I once heard her describe the bedrooms of my sister and me as "Sodom and Gomorrah." She liked things to be in their proper place. Another German concept was "Disziplin" - discipline. As in, "if you haven't got it, you're of no use to anybody, including yourself!"

And my grandmother came immediately to mind when I saw this sign the other day,

English: STOP! From here on, the wearing of a mouth-and-nose covering is a DUTY (sic - all caps)!

Modern Germans, like modern Americans, are more likely to respond to carrots than to sticks, so it's now not unlikely you'll see this sign instead:

Same icon with face mask, only this time the imperative is a polite one. Note the use of "thank you." (And, of course, the presence of an English translation suggests the people posting the sign are addressing an international audience. And that begs the question of whether the first one, in German only, comes from a mindset that assumes when one shouts "Achtung!" everyone within hearing will jump immediately to attention.

In any case, the first one reminds me of my grandmother. There's no "please," no "thank you." 

There's simply that wonderful German word "Pflicht" - "duty".

One can almost hear the second part of that command:

"Violators will be shot!"

She was a loving lady, not militarily inclined in the least. But she was a native speaker of the German language, and imprinted on me not just a lot of everyday German vocabulary items, but a whole bunch of unspoken connotations, as well.

Kerson Leong

Kerson Leong

Don't know if this is a trend, or just a nice coincidence, but I love the idea of Canada - what's not to love about Canada? - being a place where Asian families can immigrate to and produce brilliant young musicians. I know, I know.  One sweetly twittering birdie does not a springtime make. Or two, for that matter. But after going off the deep end over Montreal Canadian Bruce Xiaoyu Liu at the Chopin Competition this month, I am now grooving over another Chinese Canadian - this one from Ottawa, I believe, also really easy on the eyes, whose mode of seduction is the violin.

His name is Kerson Leong. For a little background, click here.

Here he is playing Zigeunerweisen, that honey-on-sugar-cubes overschmalzed Hungarian tune erroneously attributed to Gypsies by the Spanish composer, Pablo de Sarasate, back in the 1870s. Everybody knows the tune. It's an oh-so-Hungarian (think Liszt's Rhapsodies) romanticizing of the Gypsy Life (Zigeunerleben), the German analogue to Stephen Foster's Old Kentucky Home where "tis summer and the darkies are gay."  Today Zigeuner is a word effectively banned as insensitive in modern-day German. The traditional "Gypsy Sauce" is going the way of Aunt Jemima and Eskimo Pies and being replaced by "Paprika Sauce."  

But I digress. Here's Kerson playing "Gypsy Airs," using the "traditional" word (Zigeuner) for gypsy.

And it's a toss-up which part of the whole I love most. The beautiful young face, the music, the patent leather shoes, the virtuosity at the violin...

I guess I'd have to say the shirt.

I've got to get that shirt to wear at weddings and parties.

Once again, Zigeunerweisen. Click and swoon.

photo credit

XVIII Konkurs Chopinowski*

 Bruce Liu, on hearing 
he's the first prize
winner

I feel I've just come back from music camp and I'm so filled with music that I'm seriously disoriented. I don't know how to get back to life as normal. Taku tells me it's time I focused on some of the things around the house begging for attention - the kitchen drain keeps backing up and we probably need a new garbage disposal - it will be our fourth! And the busted recessed light over the kitchen sink is crying equally loudly for an electrician. But I've been listening to Chopin's études, mazurkas, polonaises, sonatas, nocturnes, preludes and impromptus for two weeks now - almost morning till night, and the expression "from the sublime to the ridiculous" has taken on new relevance as a summation of the absurdity of life.

The hardest part of the experience is recognizing that my friends, bless their hearts, by and large, don't seem to want to put their lives on hold and listen to four to six hours of Chopin all day every day, and I've had to go this alone. Not that my friends don't like Chopin; it's that most of them have lives. Some actually go to work.

No matter. I have been following the competition practically from when it started, nineteen days ago on the 2nd of this month, gradually gathering steam, learning more than I ever thought I would about Chopin and his music and watching the pool of some 150 wannabes in the preliminaries get whittled down to 87 pianists from 18 countries for the first round, then 45 for the second, 23 for the third, and 12 for the final round. By the time they reached the final round I felt I had a personal connection with all the contestants and - from the privacy of my room where I can choke and tear up at will - I began seeing them all as my kids. I picked a favorite - Bruce Liu - early on - and tried to persuade myself it was his beautiful hands making beautiful music that was the sole criterion, but I knew down there somewhere inside I was also being drawn to him as a sympathetic dude from Montreal, charming as he is handsome, and I'd make an absolutely terrible judge.

But picking a favorite among such talents seems crass, somehow. It's like being asked to choose your favorite child, your favorite dog, your favorite finger on your right hand. You don't have a favorite, in the end. You thank the stars you are not on the jury of world-class Chopinists choosing the latest to join their ranks. The Warsaw Competition is right up there with the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow that Americans - well, this American, at least - became aware of back in 1958, when the prize went to Van Cliburn. I was 18 years old and at the point of recognizing that my brief glory days as a pianist and organist were in fact never going to take me into the major league. I was always going to be an enthusiastic listener, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

Today I have absolutely no sense of having missed out. I am delighted that I got a good music education as a child in the public schools of Winsted, Connecticut. These days at the top of the list of the many ways my country is messed up is the way in which it distributes its wealth so badly that it keeps its military and its corporate executives going strong all the while insisting that civics, art and music classes are luxuries we cannot afford. I don't know how many others around the world and in the United States were glued to YouTube these past three weeks, but I wish the whole world might have put things on hold to share in this breathtaking adventure. I take great consolation in the fact that since these performances are available on YouTube, they should eventually reach a much greater number than they have so far.

I've always loved Chopin, but until this experience, when asked to name my favorite composer I would say Brahms or Rachmaninoff. Chopin was always a bit too much on the flowery side to take the number one position. I'm not sure I want to revise my list - the metaphor of having to choose a favorite finger holds in this case, as well. But I am humbled by having been exposed to so many more of Chopin's compositions into realizing I simply didn't know enough to be even close to making an educated assessment. In any case, I will always appreciate the fact that it was Chopin who made piano music what it is today. Nobody composed more - or better - for the piano.

What struck me most about the contestants was how young they are. 

The twelve finalists, listed from youngest to oldest with their birthdays are:

Eva Gevorgyan - April 15, 2004
JJ Jun Li Bui - June 10, 2004
Hao Rao - February 4, 2004

Hyuk Lee - January 4, 2000
Kamil Pacholec - November 11, 1998
Bruce Liu - May 8, 1997
Jakub Kaszlik - December 23, 1996
Martín García García - December 3, 1996
Aimi Kobayashi - September 23, 1995
Alexander Gadjiev - December 24, 1994
Kyohei Sorita - September 1, 1994
Leonora Armellini - June 25, 1992

(for a complete list of competitors, click here)

The average of all the birth years is 1997.8, which means the oldest, Leonora, just turned 29 this summer,  the youngest three are only 17 and the median and average age is around 23. This is a competition among young folk, many of whom have been playing since they were prodigies. I think I can be forgiven for thinking of them as my "kids." On the basis of age, they could all be my grandkids!

When I began tuning in to actual performances, I listened to some of the 87 of the first round quite at random, and immediately found myself thinking, "This has got to be the winner." Then I'd hear the next one and think, "Well, maybe this one - he/she's just as good." And this went on and on, each new player wowing my socks off. I've never had this experience before, never listened to talent this conspicuous in such intensity, one after the next. I was hooked. Couldn't stop. Had to hear the next and the next and the next.

I needed a point of focus, and that became the contestants from Japan. I'm married to a Japanese, but even more significantly, I taught Japanese students, mostly undergraduates, for most of my career, and developed a sense of familiarity and affection over the years. The occasional rotten egg would show up now and again, but overwhelmingly I had the fortune of getting to know dozens and dozens - more like hundreds - of really great Japanese kids between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, for the most part. It was natural for me to see the twelve Japanese contenders among the initial 87 in the same light as I saw my students. Only here they were nervously putting themselves all out, showing their best sides, and absolutely shining. I found myself beaming. My kids were blowing them away!

One of the contestants, Hayato Sumino, I was already quite familiar with. I have been listening to his YouTube videos for several years now. He's a bit of a showboat, but his brilliance never fails to get your attention. He's very versatile, does jazz piano as well as classical, plays around, even playing duets with himself on the Steinway and a toy piano simultaneously, and although I began tuning out when he got overly chummy (and I think intellectually lazy) with his fans, I never stopped tuning in when he played seriously. I had a contestant to root for.

In time, however, I began to realize there were other Japanese that could more than match him. Kyohei Sorita first caught my attention, then Aimi Kobayashi. When these two made the finalist list and Hayato (who goes by the nickname "Cateen") didn't, I realized I was using YouTube as a filter without a lot of justification. Young talent commonly fail to get the attention it deserves. Kyohei and Aimi are well known in Japan, it turns out. Just not by me. And there in a nutshell is sufficient reason for holding competitions like this one in Warsaw. These kids need to be put on stage and heard perform. If I could go back in time, I would attend the Hamamatsu and Sendai competitions in Japan as well as any others within reach over the years.

By the time the twelve finalists got to perform, I had had time to expand beyond the Japanese contestants. I was now familiar with Leonora, from Italy, with Alexander from the border town and his dual Slovenian-Italian identity, the Spaniard, Martín García García, who delighted me no end with the way he bounced in his seat, tossed his head back and forth and hummed along. I remember reading about how Glenn Gould used to hum unconsciously along with his playing and engineers making recordings of his performances frequently had to stop him and start over. It was a bit annoying when I first saw Martín do the same thing, but this quickly turned into something too charming for words. How could you fail to appreciate an artist so into his own playing that he can't stop singing along?

Other trivia caught my attention. Like how many East Asians were present. In my own lifetime, I remember (in about 1970) NHK putting programs on television instructing audiences how to applaud. I found this hilarious, and maybe a bit embarrassing. But more recently a friend invited me over to hear Chinese audiences learning to appreciate Western classical music, and I realize how recently Asians have started breaking into the field, and how they are taking (have taken) it over with a vengeance. I mean that positively. It's hardly a hostile takeover; they're adding so much to what Europeans and Americans have called their own cultural possession for centuries and have made it truly universal. And I have to mention, along that line, that half of the twelve finalists are East Asian, ethnically, and that the two Canadians among the finalists are both ethnically Chinese - and one of them, Bruce Liu, is the gold prize winner. Bruce was born in Paris and raised in Montreal, and one has to add "cosmopolitan" to the list of adjectives he might use in boasting about himself, if he were so inclined. They tell me he is not so inclined.

While I'm chuffed as hell that Bruce won first prize (those hands! how could you not love those hands!) I'm also aware that were he not in the contest Kyohei Sorita would surely have won it. Luck of the draw. It's always that way. When you leave the judging of world-class performances in the hands of judges, no matter how sharp their powers of observation, it's always a subjective decision. I trust Kyohei - and Aimi as well - are just getting started, and I've got people to watch closely in the years to come.

Don't know how many years I have left.

I'm glad I lived long enough to have had this, my very own Chopin music camp, in the privacy of my bedroom, where I could choke up and tear up, and stifle sobs - long ago having learned that I don't cry that much with grief, and not at all with sadness. But beauty opens the ducts like nobody's business.

What a couple of weeks!

*I posted my last blog entry under the mixed English-Polish title of Chopinowski Competition. I thought this time I'd go all the way.

photo credit

Chopinowski Competition

For anybody tired of standing in line to get a flu shot, tired of people reminding you that Trump could become president again in 2024, tired of hearing how the Republican Party is now working full time to remove the right of black people to vote and how the Supreme Court could very well remove the possibility of poor women getting access to an abortion (rich women can afford to travel to Mexico), let me suggest you turn your attention to the 18th Annual International Chopin Piano Competition (XVIII Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina, if your Polish is up to snuff) going on as we speak now in Warsaw. I promise you you won't be sorry. You may, if you're inclined to tear up at the exquisite, find yourself balling your eyes out. So much beauty has never come out of a Steinway or a Yamaha. Well, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but only just a bit.

For a full report, click here.  Or read on.

The first round of 180 contestants performed back in April. Half of those went on to the second round, known as the "Main Event" which began four days ago, October 2. It consists of three stages first with around 80, then 40, then 20 contestants each and a final stage with ten pianists.

I found a list of 87 contestants and zeroed in just on the Japanese ones, since they include some of the pianists I have followed for some time and gotten to be very fond of. There are twelve of them and they include one of my top two favorites: Hayato Sumino (aka Cateen). Fantastic as he is, if I read the results right, he didn't make it to the second round. Shows you how high the bar is!

STOP THE PRESSES.  MY BAD!!! Cateen DID make it to the second round, along with seven other of the Japanese contestants. Sorry for my error.

Just saw an interview with Garrick Ohlsson where he said, in response to a question about whether he was going to listen to the competition this year, "No." Too much of a good thing. I got to that point myself. Like dining on a banquet table with nothing laid out in front of you but an unlimited supply of chocolate ice cream. Had to jump to something mundane - like Chris Hayes' speculation that Tucker Carlson's head might be on the chopping block at Fox because of the sheer amount of misinformation on Covid he puts out there. Hayes believes Tucker is so over the top that even Fox is going to have to shut him down.

Garrick Ohlsson also related a wonderful tidbit about what a snob Chopin was. Referring to Liszt, he apparently once said, "Get that pig out of my garden."

What a world, where Chopin can call Liszt a pig.

Meanwhile, back down here on Planet Earth I can groove on the fact that in Russian, the genitive masculine adjective ending ends in -ego, but it's pronounced -evo for some crazy reason. The Poles apparently have the same -ego ending but it's pronounced -ego.

Must find out why the Russians have that peculiar feature. And why in Slavic languages surnames are adjectives. And that's why Mr. Tchaikovskii is Tchaikovskii and his missus is Madame Tchaikovskaya.

And when you look at her you're looking at Madame Tchaikovskuyu.

In any case, this is the 18th Konkurs (Competition) Chopinowski.

Just love that.

 I won't post links to any of the concerts. They're all online. All of them. You can find them easily on YouTube. Just type in some Polish - like Chopinowski. Or Chopinowskego, if you prefer addressing him in the genitive.

Or you could just start here to get yesterday's morning session. You’ll easily find your way from there to the other dozens of hours of c̶h̶o̶c̶o̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶m̶ Chopin etudes, ballads, waltzes, etc. 

And brilliant young people to make you feel a whole lot better about the world.



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Bye bye, Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson is now leaving the stage. He's retiring from the 700 Club, the popular TV program he hosted on the Christian Broadcasting Network he built with the profits from his diamond mine in Africa. Which he bought with the widows' mites he fleeced from the innocents in his audience who believed their responses to his televangelist appeals for cash were a way of bringing about God's kingdom on this earth.

The world can only wish him a speedy journey into oblivion.

I learned a lot about power from this man and how it works. When he exercised the power he had from the millions of dollars he earned preaching to the religiously gullible, he was a dangerous evil man, somebody to fear and work to oppose. Gay people suffered greatly from his pronouncements in the days when he was taken seriously by mainstream America. He regularly preached that gays were responsible for hurricanes and maybe even a meteor. And even claimed that they wore special rings designed to cut into people's flesh and give them AIDS. And, more recently, that they also brought on Covid.

Despite the fact that he wrapped himself in the banner of Christianity, his views of God were purely that of an Old Testament god of wrath who inflicted punishment, not a god of love, forgiveness and compassion. But those views are also shared by a large segment of the American evangelical population, or his message would have fallen on deaf ears. He's not alone in his folly; it takes two to tango.

As the gay liberation movement in the U.S. and other modern nations came of age, it became clear that he was little more than a clown, and not a particularly clever one. Gays were not the only people to laugh at him. Blacks too (and the general population, for that matter) saw the fool in him when he pronounced the Black Lives Matter movement a movement to bring about a "lesbian Marxist revolution."

People focused too much on the fact that he was a Trump supporter, and not enough on the fact that the reason for his support was his belief that Trump would bring on Armageddon. 

In any case, he's gone. And like with the urine stains my dogs left on our carpet when they were still puppies, it will take some scrubbing to erase his memory.

But the stains are gone.

And I trust the memory of this clown, too, will fade in short order.

Devil vs. Deep-Blue-Sea

First I bitch and moan about the state of American politics, switching back and forth between the view that we are in thrall to a bunch of low-lifes with tribalistic instincts kissing up to corporate bosses, and the view that America is a perfectly functioning democracy - and that's the problem: we get the government we ask for. Then I swing to the other extreme and turn on all my friends who see things from the same perspective and lecture them on the importance of not turning things over to those on the dark side. Don't forget we have some very decent and capable people working in politics, I say. Think Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and don't give up the ship.

Then I swing back again, agonize over the thought that we have not been able to rid ourselves of this Trump cult and the charlatan may actually run again in 2024 and win. The Republicans have sold their souls to the devil and the democrats don't want to do what appears to be necessary - act like Republicans, compromise their values, find a strong leader to herd the cats they are by necessity as free(er) thinkers. And, to jump metaphors mid-stream, make their clammy hands into fists.

But how?

How do we manage that?

I've been following the German election, as the small handful of friends who have followed me lately know, and when asked to explain that semi-obsession I tell them it's because I tend to hold German politicians in higher regard. Maybe that's because the average German voter is better-informed and their history motivates them to work a tad harder at democracy. Or maybe it's because they're better at calling stupid stupid, and it's harder for the likes of a Ted Cruz or an Andrew Clyde (that bozo from Georgia who pronounced the January 6 insurrection a "normal tourist visit") to get traction.

What's refreshing about the political debate in Germany is that it sometimes veers off into remarkably serious territory when you least expect it. Like on the Markus Lanz talk show recently when a conservative CDU supporter laid into a leftie Left Party leader, admonishing her to remember hers is the party derived from the East German Social Unity Party that ran East Germany, built the wall, turned the whole country into spies, etc. etc. Whereupon she turned on the guy and said, in effect, "And yours is the party that absorbed all the old Nazis into it after the war, helping them get away with murder scot free, so there ain't no way I'm going to take my lessons on history and morality from the likes of you." Something like that.  That's her words as seen through an American lens; she was far more civil. But that's essentially what she said.

And speaking of viewing German politics through an American lens, that, it turns out, is a pretty good reason for taking the time to study the German political scene. You can see the conflict between the progressives and the conservatives unencumbered by distractions like all-hat-and-no-cattle Texas bullshitter Cruz. Or the road-kill slick of Lyndsey Graham, whose loyalties - and moral values - can turn on a dime.

I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that the alarmists are right when it comes to climate change. Can't prove it. Don't have the technical expertise. It's just a fear, probably over-the-line irrational, but it gets confirmed from all directions, so I can't let it go. I love, absolutely love, the State of California. It has been my home since I first discovered it back in 1963 and vowed to move here one day. Which I did in 1965 and despite 24 years in Japan and more time in Germany and Saudi Arabia, I never stopped calling it home. And now I watch it burst into flames every summer. I also watch Germany flood and Antarctica melt, and I'm scared for the future. I won't be around but I am blessed with a life full of lovable children and my heart aches for them. I am profoundly drawn to the environmental goals of Greta Thunberg and her "Fridays for future" and the world's various "Green" parties.

Because the Union Parties, the conservatives now bidding farewell to a leader, Angela Merkel, so impressive that they actually call her "Mommy" (Mutti), are more focused on wealth generation than climate change, they used the fear of communism as a campaign strategy by just such moves as that attempt to smear the Left spokesperson (Katja Kipping is her name) on the Markus Lanz program with the evils of the East German regime, dismissing her assertions that "The Left" have done a bang-up job of clearing out the rot in their midst and starting fresh, thank you very much, and don't lecture me....

Armin Laschet, the CDU leader who just came in second, rode hard on his Social Democratic Party opponent, Olaf Scholz, for not clearly stating he would not work with the Left Party, which has a "remove Germany from NATO" policy in its program. Scholz refused to take the bait, said policy issues would be worked out post-election when it came time for negotiations over which coalition would rule. But it's clear the left and right division could be defined by what in America gets labeled socialism (which Americans can't distinguish from communism much of the time) on the one hand and capitalism on the other. It also draws the line clearly between environment-first and economy-first advocates. If you listen carefully, both are actually saying both/and, not either/or, but the average German listener, I'm guessing (if I'm not projecting too much America-think on them) likely hears either/or.

The conservative argument makes sense. Christian Lindner is probably its most effective spokesman. He represents the "yellow" party - the Free Democrats, Germany's sometimes socially liberal, usually libertarian party. It's his view, and he's quite explicit about it, that Germany is good at technology and innovation, and we ought not to sell ourselves short; we can meet the carbon reduction and other environmentalist goals better, he says, by not threatening the economy with high taxes, as the left wants to do, but by encouraging innovation.

Never mind that that was one of Angela Merkel's weak points. She was all about economy, because that's what most people, especially those with more money, want - continued economic well-being, protecting the German car industry, for example, and removing much impetus for innovation in doing so. The FDP and the CDU see pretty much eye-to-eye on that issue. "You will never get your green goals unless you have the people behind you," you will hear the CDU and FDP charge, the implication being if you try and tax the rich you'll fall flat on your ass. I can certainly see the appeal of this line of reasoning, but I also can't sublimate my suspicion that for all its appearance of rational common sense, it has the scent of bullshit.

That's my point. That's what listening to the Germans make their points from the left and the right, free of the fog we in America have to contend with, does for me. Brings home the fact that we are dependent on expertise. And it's not just enough to say we should listen to scientists. Of course we should listen to scientists. But which ones? And what do we do with the political realists that say we have to persuade people to follow us, that we cannot do it without broad support? What if the masses are missing the very important claim that we are at the edge of catastrophe and fussing over economic policies at a time like this is shuffling chairs on the Titanic?

I am buffeted personally by friends who argue for leaving the fray to tend their gardens, listen to their music, read their escapist novels. And by others who suggest that democracy, which depends on an enlightened electorate, is probably on the rocks, that it was never more than a pipe dream anyway.

And by people who try to convince me that life is never anything more than a faith journey to begin with, that I should listen to my own advice and live by the wise men and the elephant story, that we never know as much about the big picture as we think we do. Maybe the optimists need to be given a hearing. Maybe the Christian Lindners are right and the engineers of the future will solve our environmental problems.

I really let the know-nothings get to me, those folks conditioned by religion to believe that faith equals wisdom. I hate it when people tell me that God answers prayer, that the folks at Auschwitz simply had a spell of bad luck. Or when if I just close my eyes and tap my red slippers together three times I can get back to Kansas. Or that Trump is a smart man because he's not a politician. And that he's rich because, well, because he's rich.

I want to know how we run a democracy with so many folks tuning out and so many others slipping back into pre-modern notions of white supremacy and other clearly non-democratic ideas. It's a three-way tug-of-war between obliviousness as a value, hope as all-we've-got, and surrender Dorothy.

I'll go with hope, of course.

And maybe tomorrow I'll be more positive about the world. 

I'm sure I will.

Pretty sure.

German Elections - Part III

The German election is now over with and the results are in. Olaf Scholz got 25.7% of the votes, a huge gain for the Socialists over the last election, while Armin Laschet of the Union Parties got only 23.1% of the votes, a huge drop in support for the party ruled by Angela Merkel these past sixteen years. Peek through the windows at Socialist Party headquarters and you’ll see them popping champagne corks. Tune in to the CDU/CSU headquarters, on the other hand, and you’ll see them crying in their beer. The Socialists have won.

Right?

Wrong.

The election is over, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the real story is just beginning to play out, and that is how the next German government will be formed by means of painstakingly negotiated coalition building.

Remember the names of the coalitions, based on the colors assigned to the parties? We’re down to three possibilities, two coalitions and a continued partnership:

1. A Jamaica coalition: black (CDU/CSU Union Parties); Green; and Yellow (the FDP - Free Democratic Party)

2. A “Traffic Light (Ampel, in German) Coalition: Red (SPD - Socialist Party of Germany, a “social democratic” party); Yellow (FDP); Green

Since the Union and the Socialists pulled in close to the same number of votes, this means it’s all up to the Greens and the FDP (yellow) which of them they want to work with. They are now officially “kingmaker” parties. The Greens are closer to the Socialists and the FDP is closer to the Union. Something’s got to give.

Both of these would require compromises the party leaders have sworn they’d never make. The Green Party’s original raison d’etre was to save the environment, and they, along with the Socialists, want to tax the super rich in order to make that happen. The FDP is the party that represents the interests of the super rich, and their leader, Christian Lindner, is on record for having turned down a coalition before with the comment, “Rather than to govern badly, I’d rather not govern at all.” And think of them as Republicans shouting “No new taxes!”

The good news, to most German ears, is the fact that the party on the extreme left, “The Left,” is out. They got less than 5% of the votes, and will be in parliament thanks only to a peculiar rule which allows them to by-pass the 5% limit restriction because they have three “direct mandates” (which I won’t go into here). In any case they are now largely irrelevant, and their desire to pull Germany out of NATO is no longer a serious threat. At the other extreme, the AfD dropped 2.3% down to no more than 10.3% of the vote, so they too are unable to make waves. The government, whatever it turns out to be, will be a government of the middle.

The third option, a “Groko” (Grand Coalition)  would seem to be a reasonable one, with the two leading parties sharing power with their combined forces of 49.8% of the total vote. They’d need to throw a bone to somebody to get them over the 50% mark, and I have to admit I don’t know how that would work. But it’s not a serious proposition, since the government has been a Groko government for many years now, with Angela Merkel the senior partner and Olaf Scholz and the Socialists as the junior partner. They could just switch places, of course, and make Scholz the senior partner and Laschet the junior partner, except for the fact that 1) Laschet has been adamant about not wanting to play second fiddle, and 2) the huge drop in support for the Union indicates that Germans are looking for a change. Carrying on with business as usual would be a very bad idea.

So my money is on a socialist-led coalition with the Greens and the FDP - a Traffic Light coalition. But that is going to take some very powerful give-and-take negotiations. There’s huge pressure on both the greens and the FDP to put German unity ahead of party policy.

That, as we know, would never fly in America where the Republicans now openly support a right-wing power center under Trump’s influence, America be damned.  Can the Germans show they are better than that?

Midnight Mass - a Netflix streaming film review

Ever since my first serious reading of the Bible, starting with a couple of serious courses in Biblical analysis in college, half a century ago, it’s been clear to me that the kind of people who insist on calling themselves “bible-centered Christians” have almost certainly never read it carefully. It they had, they would recognize it as a story of a people rejoicing in the way their god beat the life out of their enemies, dashing their kids’ brains against the rocks, slaughtering all the men and pressing the women into sex slavery, killing young boys whose only fault was to have been born before the other children in the family, and drowning not only an Egyptian army in hot pursuit, but the entire human race, except for a single family, at one point.

The only way to read through those gruesome descriptions of sadistic punishment is to see them as wishful thinking, stuff of the imagination of a people tired of being abused and enslaved. The Old Testament writers are clearly getting back at all those people in power over them symbolically, or metaphorically. It you take them literally, they show a tribal loyalty that not only allows for savage destruction of entire villages and towns, but actually justifies genocide, rape (turning your daughters over to a mob to keep them from sodomizing your house guests), murder and enslavement. One of the greatest jokes ever perpetrated on the human race is the notion that one consults the Bible as a moral code. Sure there are passages that urge one to love one’s neighbor, to forgive one’s enemies and to sell all one has and give the income to the poor, but serious Christian folk, with precious few exceptions, recognize that as hyperbolic excess. The average Christian considers the Bible something to be read figuratively, not literally. To claim it should be read literally is to reveal to the world that you probably ought to be committed to the looney bin. Or at least that you have no clue the extent to which you're lying to yourself.

I was raised in a Christian environment, and most of the people I knew as a kid were decent folk. When you asked them about whether they really believed Lazarus was raised from the dead and Noah had two kangaroos on his ark next to two Tyrannosaurus Rex, they usually muttered that “that was a long time ago and nobody really knows what actually happened,” or “things were different then,” or “God had a different kind of relationship with the ancient Hebrews than he does with us.” Or possibly, “don’t bug me with those dumb questions.” I didn’t know anybody who was a literal fundamentalist. Those people crept into the culture (at least in my part of the country) long after I had left my small New England town.

Except the Catholics. They insisted that when the priest elevated the communion wafer and the goblet of wine they turned into the actual (sic!) body and blood of Jesus Christ. Which we were supposed to then swallow and digest. Yuck. The Lutherans of my youth hastened to inform me that Martin Luther had spotted that as some sort of science fiction, that what actually happened during Communion was that the Holy Spirit (whom we also regularly referred to as a ghost) came in, with and under the wafer and the wine. “This is my body” was not to be taken literally.

But they did. They really did, those Catholics. And they outnumbered the Protestants and the Jews among my closest friends, and I didn’t want to tell them what I really thought of that wacko notion, and held my tongue. Mostly. There were times when a “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?” may have slipped out.

And it wasn’t just the blood-drinking that I found bizarre. The prayers to Michael the Archangel that followed the mass also gave me pause. Asking him to “be our safeguard” against the “snares of the devil.” And - this part really got to me - “cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits

who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Really? You mean like trolls and leprechauns? What’s the difference between an angel and an evil spirit, by the way? And how does one spot them when one encounters them? Do only angels have wings?

I’m so very glad I tuned in the other night without bothering to read any reviews to Midnight Mass, written for Netflix by Mike Flanagan, just out this last Friday.  I figured if it was a religious program I’d find out soon enough and turn it off. It took me a couple episodes to realize it was a friggin horror flick! Not only a horror flick, but a movie about vampires. I hate horror movies, and I have never understood the appeal of ghouls and other scary creatures. The U.S. political scene is enough to keep me awake at night. I don’t need blood and gore.

But it was a mesmerizing streaming experience, one of the most gripping and engrossing films I’ve seen in ages. I’m not sure I would recommend it to everybody. I think you kind of need to have a religious background to appreciate what it’s all about. I don’t think I can come up with anything I’ve ever seen to match it. It’s a cross between a horror film and a treatise on the philosophy of religion, particularly the concepts of morality, redemption and life after death.

I hope I’m not issuing a spoiler here by saying it can also be seen, if you’ve got a perverse sense of humor, as a satire on the way Christianity as a noble pursuit has been hijacked by hypocrites and phonies with non-religious goals, as a means of acquiring power and influence, much as the Republican Party has now hijacked American democracy for similar reasons.

The story takes place on a small island thirty miles from the mainland which has been devastated by an oil spill. Most of the inhabitants have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere, leaving a small closely-knit community whose only social life seems to be centered on the local Catholic Church. When the story begins, two characters, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) and Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), one-time lovers, each with their own reasons for leaving, were back, Riley after serving four years in prison for killing a young girl after falling asleep at the wheel while drunk, and Erin after a troubled marriage and divorce. The central character, however, is the young priest who shows up with the information that their beloved regular priest, Monsignor Pruitt, has fallen ill on the mainland and he, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), would be temporarily standing in. Nobody bothers to verify the information.

Three other characters play important roles in advancing the plot - the Muslim sheriff, Hassan (Rahul Kohli) - along with his son Ali (Rahul Abburi), who despite their conspicuously outsider status, are respected and liked except by Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan), a humorless tyrant of a woman who serves as a kind of lay deaconess at the church, an out-and-out anti-Muslim bigot. She is the kind of religious zealot that Saturday Night Live’s church lady (played by Dana Carvey) is meant to satirize.

At some point miracles start happening. First a young girl in a wheelchair gets up and walks. Then an old woman with dementia suddenly becomes her younger charming self again. Riley’s father, who has suffered for years with serious back problems is suddenly pain free.

To share more of the plot line is to ruin the experience of this edge-of-your-seat performance, so I’ll stop; I’ve already said far too much about what goes on. Despite a number of glaring anomalies - the fact that the village is 100% Roman Catholic and that mass includes one old fashioned Protestant hymn after another arranged by the Newton Brothers and sung with what is clearly professional voices - does not detract one whit from the narrative. The other major “anomaly” - if that’s what it is - that should be off-putting, but isn’t - are the long treatises on religion that the characters engage in from time to time, including a defense of Islam by Hassan against Christianity. They are serious topics, and would not be out of place in religious settings - which is why I said that the story would have greater appeal among the religiously informed.

The film is a life-long project of writer/director/producer Mike Flanagan (for background, see the excellent New York Times review by Darryn King from a few days ago here.) Flanagan, who grew up on an island (Governor's Island in New York Harbor), and is clearly working out some of his struggles with alcoholism and the fear that he could kill somebody when drunk and have to live out his life with the guilt - as well as his worldview as a relapsed Catholic. Flanagan is known for his horror films like The Haunting of Hill House, based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name and Dr. Sleep and The Shining by Stephen King, also of the same names. I’m still recovering from Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, which I first read many decades ago, and I couldn’t get through Stephen King’s novels on a bet, so Midnight Mass is likely to be my last horror experience for some time.

At least it doesn’t have monsters jumping out at you.

Well, maybe once or twice.