Hello, my name is David and I am a newsaholic.
I know, I know. We have tried it all. Family interventions. Rehab, JA (Journalists Anonymous), 12-step programs, no new relationships for a year, experimental medicines that make you vomit if you sip the news, intense therapy, non-intense therapy, group therapy, marriage therapy (under the theory I may be the man who mistook his wife for a tabloid), befriending God and the most extreme of all -- non-news days.
But nothing worked. I remain a news junkie.
Since the family now accepts that, they've already agreed on the message for my tombstone: "Breaking News: I'm dead."
Until then, the current news cycle is my best friend and these days it's a bit hard to keep up.
* Trump goes to Dade County, the global pandemic center, and doesn't wear a mask or mention the virus.
* A baby dies in Texas from Covid-19. An 11-year-old dies from it in Florida. A medical examiner so overworked he can't accept any more bodies says his autopsies show multiple blood clots in multiple organs of the victims.
* The White House tells the main truth-teller left in the administration, Dr. Fauci, to stop appearing on TV. He says he hasn't met with Trump in months.
* Fire season has started here in the West. Prison inmates usually help fight wildfires, but so many have Covid-19, there are not enough this year.
* In some sort of karmic justice, the city Trump chose for his convention next month, Jacksonville, is so filled with Corona-V that local Republican officials hope nobody comes.
* Mitch McConnell says he ain't planning to go. Neither are many GOP senators.
* Trump pardons his friend and political operative, Roger Stone, who was convicted of seven felony counts, including lying to Congress.
* Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, warns that the U.S. may reach "one of the most unstable times in the history of our country. We will have hospitals overwhelmed and ... exhausted hospital staff ... that's getting ill themselves."
* Harvard and MIT are seeking to protect foreign students from losing their visas, while the President is threatening the tax-exempt status of institutions that he says indoctrinate students.
***
What can I possibly say about all of this? I sat in the front yard watching the butterflies and the hummingbirds, and thought for a while. More passersby seem to wave at me nowadays, maybe because I'm becoming a fixture like a hedge, a sidewalk, or a clump of ivy.
I just hope they don't think I'm part of that bamboo forest that sends up sprouts here and there. I don't wish to be served up as the centerpiece at somebody's wedding reception.
Wait a minute! I just realized I neglected to mention the most amazing news story of all! The President has revealed that his doctors were surprised at how well he did on a cognition test. In fact, he says, he "aced" it.
As one who's no stranger to cognition tests, I'm speechless. First, it's not difficult to do well on a cognition test. It has questions like "Do you know where you are?" It's the sort of quiz you better ace because a B would be a failing grade.
Second, neurologists don't give you cognition tests for the fun of it. Either you've had a stroke (like I did) or you are acting strangely in ways that suggest you may have suffered some other sort of brain trauma.
My fellow stroke survivors will tell you that one of the common after-effects of a seizure is an almost preternatural tendency to tell the truth, even if you are otherwise a congenital liar. You might, for example, tell people you aced a cognition test.
And that your doctors were surprised.
***
Let's face it. The circus we are witnessing in Washington, D.C. has become a very tired act. Trump makes so many unsubstantiated claims that the Democrats are starting to not even respond to some of them.
What should logically happen at this point is the responsible media should just stop covering Trump any more than is absolutely necessary. But they can't stop, because they are addicted to his brand of news. What we need is a massive self-help movement for the mainstream media (MSM in Trump parlance).
The President may be lousy at governing but he's great at manipulating media. I can tell that many of my former colleagues are exhausted as a result.
Maybe the entire national media establishment, including Fox, should take a holiday this weekend and come out here to contemplate the butterflies and hummingbirds with me.
Think of it as therapy, or a non-news day.
I'm quite sure they could ace it.
-30-
Saturday, July 11, 2020
Friday, July 10, 2020
Tropical Nights
The U.S. is experiencing 60,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. According to Dr. Fauci, we are headed toward the threshold of 100,000/day sometime in the coming months.
Over 130,000 Americans have died from the disease, and that total is headed toward even more catastrophic levels as well. The Vietnam War was the iconic disaster for my generation, with a total of 58,000 U.S. soldiers lost over the many years of that conflict.
By contrast, the pandemic deaths have occurred in just a few months' time.
Trying to let these numbers sink in, I become overwhelmed by the scale of what we are living through. A vaccine, according to the experts, is probably a long way off, so we will have to be coping with this catastrophe for the foreseeable future.
Our economy is staggering; millions of the jobs that have been lost won't be coming back. Our educational system is beset by a terrible uncertainty: Can students safely return to school this fall? Some are predicting that it is likely there will be no in-person classes possible in the near term. That is a scenario this country does not seem prepared for. Our students are at risk on so many levels; they face the disease, which is spreading rapidly among the young; they face a serious disruption of their educations; and they face uncertainty in the job market.
I can think of three pieces of good news about all of this we should not overlook, though each comes with a "but"...
The short-term effect on our environment may be positive, as a reduction in car traffic is easing the carbon emissions at least temporarily. But over the long term, climate change is relentlessly looming over not only our society but the entire planet, and there seems to be no global consensus on what to do about that.
An encouraging aspect of Joe Biden's newly announced plan for the economy is that he will insist on green purchasing by the U.S. government, which is the biggest consumer of them all. That will create jobs and it will help preserve the environment. A green procurement philosophy in Washington, D.C. would be a major positive that could emerge from this trying period. But even the most progressive budgetary moves will not blunt the impacts of the pandemic on most families.
Some types of crime, like home burglary, are down, since most homes are never empty any more. Reports of domestic abuse are up, however, probably for the same reason. Gun violence continues unabated.
The net net here is it is becoming increasingly difficult even for optimists like me to find a silver lining to Corona-V.
***
Getting ready for an overnight trip to a beach community yesterday morning, my six-year-old granddaughter packed her rolling suitcase and strapped a large stuffed teddy bear that is substantially larger than she is on top.
"So your bear likes the beach, right?" I noted as she pulled her suitcase around the house impatiently, waiting for when the time would be right to load the car.
"And he doesn't need sunblock," she pointed out.
She has a point. This is not a particularly bad time to be a stuffed animal.
***
The weather service warns that parts of the U.S., especially the Southwest, are going to experience a serious heat wave, with temperatures way in excess of 100 degrees in the coming days. Whenever it gets really hot, I start thinking about writing in the tropics.
The rest of this post is a reprint of an essay I originally published 11 years ago in 2009:
Over 130,000 Americans have died from the disease, and that total is headed toward even more catastrophic levels as well. The Vietnam War was the iconic disaster for my generation, with a total of 58,000 U.S. soldiers lost over the many years of that conflict.
By contrast, the pandemic deaths have occurred in just a few months' time.
Trying to let these numbers sink in, I become overwhelmed by the scale of what we are living through. A vaccine, according to the experts, is probably a long way off, so we will have to be coping with this catastrophe for the foreseeable future.
Our economy is staggering; millions of the jobs that have been lost won't be coming back. Our educational system is beset by a terrible uncertainty: Can students safely return to school this fall? Some are predicting that it is likely there will be no in-person classes possible in the near term. That is a scenario this country does not seem prepared for. Our students are at risk on so many levels; they face the disease, which is spreading rapidly among the young; they face a serious disruption of their educations; and they face uncertainty in the job market.
I can think of three pieces of good news about all of this we should not overlook, though each comes with a "but"...
The short-term effect on our environment may be positive, as a reduction in car traffic is easing the carbon emissions at least temporarily. But over the long term, climate change is relentlessly looming over not only our society but the entire planet, and there seems to be no global consensus on what to do about that.
An encouraging aspect of Joe Biden's newly announced plan for the economy is that he will insist on green purchasing by the U.S. government, which is the biggest consumer of them all. That will create jobs and it will help preserve the environment. A green procurement philosophy in Washington, D.C. would be a major positive that could emerge from this trying period. But even the most progressive budgetary moves will not blunt the impacts of the pandemic on most families.
Some types of crime, like home burglary, are down, since most homes are never empty any more. Reports of domestic abuse are up, however, probably for the same reason. Gun violence continues unabated.
The net net here is it is becoming increasingly difficult even for optimists like me to find a silver lining to Corona-V.
***
Getting ready for an overnight trip to a beach community yesterday morning, my six-year-old granddaughter packed her rolling suitcase and strapped a large stuffed teddy bear that is substantially larger than she is on top.
"So your bear likes the beach, right?" I noted as she pulled her suitcase around the house impatiently, waiting for when the time would be right to load the car.
"And he doesn't need sunblock," she pointed out.
She has a point. This is not a particularly bad time to be a stuffed animal.
***
The weather service warns that parts of the U.S., especially the Southwest, are going to experience a serious heat wave, with temperatures way in excess of 100 degrees in the coming days. Whenever it gets really hot, I start thinking about writing in the tropics.
The rest of this post is a reprint of an essay I originally published 11 years ago in 2009:
One of the enduring images I carry around of a writer is that of the great Rudyard Kipling, banging away on a manual typewriter, the tap-tap-tap of the keys audible through an open window somewhere in Lahore as he wrote "Kim" over a century ago now.
Of course, I have no idea whether he wrote "Kim" in Lahore, which was then part of India, but it really doesn't matter. The point is that the idea of him at work captured my imagination, sometime at a much younger age, and it motivates me still.
I've never published a novel, or even a short story, under my real name, but I have written articles and books (some on manual typewriters) in the tropics. I've written in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tahiti, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Tahiti, among other places.
But some of my best writing (fiction and non-fiction) came at Sanibel Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Lately, I have been revisiting some of that material, trying to craft a novel, or at least a series of stories, out of the stuff I produced on an old manual typewriter in our family cottages on that island.
That type of writing continues, often at night, here in a place no one would call tropical, though given the strange weather patterns we are enduring plus global warming, it may be in the near future.
-30-
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Vicarious Living
The Ivy League is cancelling its sports programs for the fall due to the ongoing pandemic. Stanford has ended 11 varsity sports altogether, including wrestling. Ohio State has suspended football practice after reporting Covid-19 infections.
And according to the AP, 51 Division I teams, 56 Division II teams and 52 Division III teams have been dropped by four-year colleges because of the pandemic. Further updates will no doubt be coming soon, including from the NCAA, which covers "nearly half a million college athletes [on] 19,886 teams." As the NCAA goes, so goes college sports.
Thanks to the health crisis, sports have been largely missing from our lives and will continue to be so. The European futbol leagues have been somewhat of an exception, as teams have been closing out their seasons playing before stadiums filled with holograms of fans and the soundtracks of previous games.
But overall no one is keeping sports fans entertained, and a whole lot of us are going slowly crazy as a result. It may be vicarious living but what better way to pass time when you have to shelter in place?
For non-sports-fans, allow me to explain: For us, a game is much more than a game. It starts with the anticipation, as we focus on the upcoming matchup.
There can't be many emotional states more powerful than anticipation.
The actual event is captured by cameras from every angle, and the replays are easily as important to the fan as the real time play. Each game creates its own narrative; one team or player is up, another is down.
There are routs, there are comebacks, there are magnificent performances and there are flops. Sort of like life.
The games generate copious statistics, which can be compared to other games, other eras, other memories of glory. Someone somewhere is always going for a record of some kind.
After the seasons conclude, there are repercussions in the form of ratings, playoffs, championship trophies, contracts, inductions into halls of fame, and the like.
For serious sports fans, there is normally a surfeit of options when it comes to which games to watch. We often plan out our entire schedules around certain sporting events, and when we can't see them in real time, we tape them for later viewing.
Finally, there is the connection with fellow fans. That is probably the most important part right now. We're sitting around isolated from each other, cut off from the vehicle that generates many of our favorite communications. We are starving.
It's hard to send a message about something that didn't happen. Thus the silence like a cancer grows, and not just at Wednesday 3 a.m.
There are so many victims directly of Covid-19, with over 3 million infected and 130,000 dead to date. The coming months promise to add to those totals dramatically. The collateral damage will include the hopes of sports fans.
***
What commentators are labeling a "political tsunami" is shaping up this November. Polls are picking up a new trend -- suburban voters appear to be abandoning Trump. If this holds true, it spells disaster for the GOP. The Democrats are salivating at the monumental victory that may result.
Of course, whichever party is in control means nothing unless the right kind of policies and regulations get implemented. The work of government is difficult, and requires compromise, always taking the views of minority stakeholders into account.
So much damage has been done to this country's standing in the world over the past four years that our global reputation is in tatters. Other leaders, formerly allies, are now passing up opportunities to bother meeting with the U.S. President at all.
Whatever you think of globalization, it is not a choice but a necessity. The old isolationism is no longer feasible, so by pulling back on commitments to UN agencies and multilateral treaties, the U.S. is effectively sheltering in place at the worst possible time.
Just as we as individuals need to connect, so does our government.
The rest of the world is waiting and watching.
***
Speaking of watching, that's what my investigative reporting colleagues do. I know the perfect anthem for them, once they lock onto a subject, even though these words are lifted from a different context altogether:
Every breath you take and every move you make
Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you
Every single day and every word you say
Every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you
--The Police
-30-
And according to the AP, 51 Division I teams, 56 Division II teams and 52 Division III teams have been dropped by four-year colleges because of the pandemic. Further updates will no doubt be coming soon, including from the NCAA, which covers "nearly half a million college athletes [on] 19,886 teams." As the NCAA goes, so goes college sports.
Thanks to the health crisis, sports have been largely missing from our lives and will continue to be so. The European futbol leagues have been somewhat of an exception, as teams have been closing out their seasons playing before stadiums filled with holograms of fans and the soundtracks of previous games.
But overall no one is keeping sports fans entertained, and a whole lot of us are going slowly crazy as a result. It may be vicarious living but what better way to pass time when you have to shelter in place?
For non-sports-fans, allow me to explain: For us, a game is much more than a game. It starts with the anticipation, as we focus on the upcoming matchup.
There can't be many emotional states more powerful than anticipation.
The actual event is captured by cameras from every angle, and the replays are easily as important to the fan as the real time play. Each game creates its own narrative; one team or player is up, another is down.
There are routs, there are comebacks, there are magnificent performances and there are flops. Sort of like life.
The games generate copious statistics, which can be compared to other games, other eras, other memories of glory. Someone somewhere is always going for a record of some kind.
After the seasons conclude, there are repercussions in the form of ratings, playoffs, championship trophies, contracts, inductions into halls of fame, and the like.
For serious sports fans, there is normally a surfeit of options when it comes to which games to watch. We often plan out our entire schedules around certain sporting events, and when we can't see them in real time, we tape them for later viewing.
Finally, there is the connection with fellow fans. That is probably the most important part right now. We're sitting around isolated from each other, cut off from the vehicle that generates many of our favorite communications. We are starving.
It's hard to send a message about something that didn't happen. Thus the silence like a cancer grows, and not just at Wednesday 3 a.m.
There are so many victims directly of Covid-19, with over 3 million infected and 130,000 dead to date. The coming months promise to add to those totals dramatically. The collateral damage will include the hopes of sports fans.
***
What commentators are labeling a "political tsunami" is shaping up this November. Polls are picking up a new trend -- suburban voters appear to be abandoning Trump. If this holds true, it spells disaster for the GOP. The Democrats are salivating at the monumental victory that may result.
Of course, whichever party is in control means nothing unless the right kind of policies and regulations get implemented. The work of government is difficult, and requires compromise, always taking the views of minority stakeholders into account.
So much damage has been done to this country's standing in the world over the past four years that our global reputation is in tatters. Other leaders, formerly allies, are now passing up opportunities to bother meeting with the U.S. President at all.
Whatever you think of globalization, it is not a choice but a necessity. The old isolationism is no longer feasible, so by pulling back on commitments to UN agencies and multilateral treaties, the U.S. is effectively sheltering in place at the worst possible time.
Just as we as individuals need to connect, so does our government.
The rest of the world is waiting and watching.
***
Speaking of watching, that's what my investigative reporting colleagues do. I know the perfect anthem for them, once they lock onto a subject, even though these words are lifted from a different context altogether:
Every breath you take and every move you make
Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you
Every single day and every word you say
Every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you
--The Police
-30-
Wednesday, July 08, 2020
Love Prevails
Like many college students, I studied psychology and even considered making that subject my major for a while. Although it is an inexact science, like all the social sciences, it holds a unique appeal to that part of ourselves that is capable of self-analysis.
Besides my studies, I have gotten to know a fair number of psychologists and psychiatrists over my life, often as a patient, sometimes as a friend. Like any other group -- lawyers, journalists, plumbers, autoworkers -- there is too much variety among individuals to make safe generalizations. That doesn't stop movies like the hilarious "What About Bob?" from taking pot shots at shrinks.
In my case, I've met a variety of smart, interesting people in that field. I've liked most of them but there has been the occasional stinker.
One of the sobering things about psychology is that when you become a parent, it is quickly apparent that there are so many ways you might mess up that opportunity. Clinical conversations often focus on your own childhood and your formative relationships with your parents. (That doesn't necessarily help.)
So, it is in this context that the President's niece, Mary Trump, has written a book. Mary Trump is a licensed clinical psychologist. Although Donald Trump's defenders are attacking the book, which is to be published next week, in political terms, the excerpts that have been leaked beforehand tell more of a heartbreaking story.
That is the story of an insecure little boy who was both pampered and neglected by a father who himself had deep psychological issues and who essentially raised young Donald to be a sociopath, virtually incapable of caring for anyone but himself.
She describes him as an emotionally frozen three-year-old, who "knows he has never been loved" and argues that Trump's "ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
Whether you like Trump or hate him, or want to use this analysis to defend or denounce him, there is something terribly sad here. There is also a cautionary tale about raising children. Beware of the tendency to always praise or always criticize your child as (s)he is growing up.
We certainly do not want to live out Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone" fantasy, where all of the children are "above normal." It's a tricky balance raising children; perhaps it is a better choice to praise their hard work and effort than suggesting their achievements are due to some sort of inherent brilliance or exceptional skill.
In any event, we may succeed and fail as parents, but let's hope most of us do not raise sociopaths.
***
There is no good news about this pandemic. Hospitalizations here in California are at an all-time high; ICUs in Florida are filling up at alarming rates; Texas, Ohio, Arizona all have major trouble; the World Health Organization says airborne coronavirus particles linger a dangerously long time; and of course Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO.
There's more of that ilk but that's enough to absorb for one news cycle.
***
Like most writers, I am usually juggling a number of writing projects, both fiction and non-fiction. One scenario I've been developing is for a story set in the not-so-distant future. It is a time when pandemics have become the norm, and our species has adapted accordingly.
This story would be set in a neighborhood where people like to get out and exercise. Every day, residents walk, job, bike, skate, scoot and run past each other. Since most people are creatures of habit, they tend to do these things according to predictable schedules.
One day, there is a minor tremor in this well-balanced universe, and Character A goes about her morning routine a bit later than usual, while Character B goes about his routine a little earlier than usual. (Note: these characters can be she and she, he and he, or they and any combination above.)
In order to resist the perpetual threat of deadly viral infection, all residents have adopted certain customs, including wearing washable body suits, masks, goggles, and head sprayers rather like miner's lamps that clear the air ahead with a sanitizer that is stored in a light-weight canister attached to your back and controlled by a button inside the belt of your body suit.
It is socially expected that as you approach another walker/jogger/scooter coming from the opposite direction that you both spray your sanitizer almost as a form of polite greeting, you know, to clear the air.
Well, on this particular day, Character A's sanitizer unit fails, leaving her feeling quite embarrassed. Character B sense her feeling of awkwardness and stops to say the same thing had happened to him recently and not to worry.
They retreat to a nearby park so he can adjust her sprayer, since he is experienced at such things. They sit down at one of those park benches that are built in order to accommodate social distance, each at one end about six feet apart.
She removes her sprayer unit and carefully places it at the center of the bench. As she does so, she moves ever so slightly closer to that middle ground. He removes his as well, plus his goggles, and places them by his side, thereby also moving somewhat closer to the center of the bench.
Next, she removes her goggles plus her mask so she can communicate more effectively. By placing them next to her she is compelled to move yet closer to the center. He strips off is mask and for the first time they see each other's faces.
By now the die have been cast. As he settled in next to her dysfunctional sprayer unit she moves as well to be near to it while he conducts his examination. "First we should check your button," he suggests. She removes it from her belt and hands it to him.
Well, that's as far as I've gotten with this particular story, but you can no doubt pick up the drift. It's a pandemic love story.
-30-
Tuesday, July 07, 2020
Behind the Walls
Over my years of teaching at UC Berkeley and Stanford, there were many international students in my classes and they invariably added to the educational and social dynamics in multiple ways. Some struggled with speaking and comprehending English, but they just worked harder and longer to keep up with the native English speakers.
It probably helped that I had experience teaching overseas and was used to speaking slowly, enunciating words clearly, and monitoring student faces to ascertain whether they were following what I was saying or not.
In the end, it was a great pleasure to work with foreign students, who came from all over the world. In seminars, I always solicited their participation in the form of educating the American students about life in their countries. They added a lot.
So it pained me greatly to learn that the Trump administration is using the pandemic as an excuse to try to bar many of these students from returning to their colleges here in the fall, and to deport the students who are already here. One of the administration's specious arguments is that international students no longer qualify to attend universities that have switched to online instruction out of concerns over Covid-19.
I'm sorry but that is pure BS, simply one more naked display of the shameful xenophobia that has marked this regime's entire time in power. It is as deplorable as the racism that has already caused so much damage to our society.
The officials who defend these exclusionist policies should be ashamed of themselves. They are directly violating this country's sacred promise enshrined by the Statue of Liberty.
At least it appears there may be consequences politically. Trump's poll numbers have crashed.
Behind the walls of the failing Trump administration, officials and strategists are desperately trying to save the remnants of yesteryear, a reign whose time has passed. It must have sounded good to many to restore the country's glory days, without considering the irony of it all.
Maybe they should have checked with The Boss:
"In fact I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm gonna drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory yeah
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, butBoring stories of
Glory days" -- Bruce Springsteen
Of course, there never were any glory days. Just a made-up fiction. There is a silver lining here, however, since Trump is free-falling. He is so out of step with our times that he is poised to experience the most lopsided re-election attempt in history.
In politics everything can change and probably will before November. But the attempt to Make America Racist Again is done. History has spoken.
***
One life principle I learned a long time ago is that by making things more accessible to those with disabilities or differences, we all benefit collectively. An example is curb cuts. It is now possible for those in wheelchairs to navigate our sidewalks safely thanks to curb cuts, but also for parents pushing babies in strollers, kids learning to ride bikes, kids on skates, older folks with canes or walkers, and anyone else who just has difficulty picking up their feet a few inches when they reach a curb.
That would include me.
By the same token, speaking the English language slowly, carefully and clearly is best for everybody, not just non-native speakers. In the Peace Corps, that is the way we had to speak it because none of our students knew more than a smattering of English words.
That formative experience for me in my early 20s turned me into a much better public speaker later on.
Besides speaking slowly, I learned to pause at the end of phrases, to give time for non-English listeners to absorb my meaning. Those pauses worked to allow the entire audience to absorb my meaning, actually; my words had much greater impact than would otherwise have been the case.
As I spoke more and more regularly before audiences here and around the world, increasing numbers of people came up to me afterward, clearly affected by the content of my speeches. But the content would have been the same regardless of the style of my speech. Had I not been influenced by my years teaching in Afghanistan, I would have delivered those speeches at a much more rapid pace, no doubt slurring words and using more slang that would have made it difficult for non-native speakers to process.
The equivalent to this principle in writing is to choose words carefully, seeking clarity and specificity. Using simpler words instead of technical or academic jargon, which only serves to exclude people. Plain speak, pure and simple, Direct from writer to reader. No filters.
Unlike Trump, I have no hidden agenda when I speak or write. I'm not going to use racist code words or try to manipulate anyone. Whether readers agree with me is not an issue. My role, as I see it, is to speak clearly about what I think and feel.
And about what I see.
I see a nation struggling to grow up and into the land of promise I always thought it could be. I see people young and old of all races willing to make the attempt to come together.
All we can do is try. I see a people finally willing to try.
-30-
It probably helped that I had experience teaching overseas and was used to speaking slowly, enunciating words clearly, and monitoring student faces to ascertain whether they were following what I was saying or not.
In the end, it was a great pleasure to work with foreign students, who came from all over the world. In seminars, I always solicited their participation in the form of educating the American students about life in their countries. They added a lot.
So it pained me greatly to learn that the Trump administration is using the pandemic as an excuse to try to bar many of these students from returning to their colleges here in the fall, and to deport the students who are already here. One of the administration's specious arguments is that international students no longer qualify to attend universities that have switched to online instruction out of concerns over Covid-19.
I'm sorry but that is pure BS, simply one more naked display of the shameful xenophobia that has marked this regime's entire time in power. It is as deplorable as the racism that has already caused so much damage to our society.
The officials who defend these exclusionist policies should be ashamed of themselves. They are directly violating this country's sacred promise enshrined by the Statue of Liberty.
At least it appears there may be consequences politically. Trump's poll numbers have crashed.
Behind the walls of the failing Trump administration, officials and strategists are desperately trying to save the remnants of yesteryear, a reign whose time has passed. It must have sounded good to many to restore the country's glory days, without considering the irony of it all.
Maybe they should have checked with The Boss:
"In fact I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm gonna drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory yeah
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, butBoring stories of
Glory days" -- Bruce Springsteen
Of course, there never were any glory days. Just a made-up fiction. There is a silver lining here, however, since Trump is free-falling. He is so out of step with our times that he is poised to experience the most lopsided re-election attempt in history.
In politics everything can change and probably will before November. But the attempt to Make America Racist Again is done. History has spoken.
***
One life principle I learned a long time ago is that by making things more accessible to those with disabilities or differences, we all benefit collectively. An example is curb cuts. It is now possible for those in wheelchairs to navigate our sidewalks safely thanks to curb cuts, but also for parents pushing babies in strollers, kids learning to ride bikes, kids on skates, older folks with canes or walkers, and anyone else who just has difficulty picking up their feet a few inches when they reach a curb.
That would include me.
By the same token, speaking the English language slowly, carefully and clearly is best for everybody, not just non-native speakers. In the Peace Corps, that is the way we had to speak it because none of our students knew more than a smattering of English words.
That formative experience for me in my early 20s turned me into a much better public speaker later on.
Besides speaking slowly, I learned to pause at the end of phrases, to give time for non-English listeners to absorb my meaning. Those pauses worked to allow the entire audience to absorb my meaning, actually; my words had much greater impact than would otherwise have been the case.
As I spoke more and more regularly before audiences here and around the world, increasing numbers of people came up to me afterward, clearly affected by the content of my speeches. But the content would have been the same regardless of the style of my speech. Had I not been influenced by my years teaching in Afghanistan, I would have delivered those speeches at a much more rapid pace, no doubt slurring words and using more slang that would have made it difficult for non-native speakers to process.
The equivalent to this principle in writing is to choose words carefully, seeking clarity and specificity. Using simpler words instead of technical or academic jargon, which only serves to exclude people. Plain speak, pure and simple, Direct from writer to reader. No filters.
Unlike Trump, I have no hidden agenda when I speak or write. I'm not going to use racist code words or try to manipulate anyone. Whether readers agree with me is not an issue. My role, as I see it, is to speak clearly about what I think and feel.
And about what I see.
I see a nation struggling to grow up and into the land of promise I always thought it could be. I see people young and old of all races willing to make the attempt to come together.
All we can do is try. I see a people finally willing to try.
-30-
Monday, July 06, 2020
The Next Phase
This virus ain't goin' away
My guess it's here to stay
All we can do is cope
Living with it day by day
Here's the deal: Wearing masks, avoiding crowds, staying a safe distance apart is how our lives will be lived going forward well into the future. It no longer is reasonable to hope for a return to "normal." Because this way of conducting our affairs is what's normal now.
A huge question looming over us is how will we continue to connect with each other? How do we continue our relationships when we can't see friends in person?
I'm not the answer guy; I'm the not sure guy. All I can speak of is what's happening in my own social life. Friends are calling, friends are emailing, friends are texting or posting comments on this Facebook feed. Sometimes they drop by, masked, and stay for a chat.
I'm reaching out to many people, seeking to renew acquaintances that had languished. It is wonderful to reconnect, especially when the silence between us is marked by years.
It's never too late to renew a friendship as long as you are both still alive. I don't know what happens after people die -- I'm not sure about that.
As time passes, so do friends.
In February I lost one, not to Covid-19 but to cancer. We had worked closely together on a daily basis for seven years after sharing the loss of a mutual friend to cancer in 2013.
We were both there at his side in his final days. Then she and I found some comfort in being in touch every day, producing the stories our friend would have loved.
When I was very ill myself last fall, she came to my house with another friend and visited with me. She wanted to help take care of me in case I wouldn't be getting better. We didn't know then. Soon after, I learned the horrible news that she was herself very ill and we started corresponding weekly by email.
My plan was to visit her as soon as I was well enough. I assumed she would get better. But that never happened. She just got worse and worse and then she died. As for me I got better and lived on.
What stays with me is that I never got to tell her goodbye.
***
Another old friend tracked me down yesterday after a gap of years. She was a colleague at Wired twenty-five years ago, a beautiful soul who is as spiritual as anyone I know, though I don't think she practices any specific religion.
As my second marriage broke up, I was broken up, and she took over to help me find a flat where I could live on my own and have my youngest children with me three nights a week. I put in a bunkbed for the boys and a single bed for my daughter. They were 9, 7 and 5 that year, which was 2003.
I got good at doing laundry, making school lunches, and cooking big dinners.
My friend got to know the kids and she also attended my oldest daughter's wedding a few years later. She got to know my girlfriends as they came and went from my life; we'd often have brunch in the Mission.
We worked together professionally on an especially creative project with mutual friends and made sure we stayed in touch the best we could as the years began to pass.
Now we are finally back together; maybe we'll find a project to work on again, and I'm so happy she is back, present in my life. I love her.
***
Just connect. That's what we need to do. If there is one enduring motive behind my words in these essays it is about human connection through time and under strain. We're living this pandemic; it's not going away. It's here to stay. All we can do is cope and live it day by day.
Part of that connecting with each other now is to recognize and support those marching for justice. We are at a critical juncture in that regard. Last night, I watched some of the documentary "1968" about the tumultuous events of the year I reached voting age. It was 1968 when a group of us went to Memphis to cover the sanitation workers' strike just before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed there. It was 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed. It was 1968 when campuses and cities erupted in violence at the pent-up frustration about the slow pace of progress on civil rights and the lack of an end to the war in Vietnam.
It feels like we have reached another such turning point in 2020. It's taken over half a century to get back to the place we were then. Will this time turn out differently?
This time around, there are more people in the streets, most of them young. Three generations of youths have come and gone since 1968. Many struggle to stay true to their youthful ideals in a society that features the greatest inequality of wealth in history.
Millionaires are a dime a dozen; billionaires are everywhere. Thanks to the Supreme Court's horrible decision, Citizen's United, these richest people can buy elections if they wish to. Forget the Russians, Ukrainians, and Chinese -- look at the guy at the top of the hill.
It's no accident that in a time of unchecked wealth for a few and widespread misery for the many, we end up not with true leaders but money-grubbing, narcissistic snake-oil peddlers holding high office. There isn't a single major politician today who deserves a statue.
As the torn bits of our dreams float away with the wind, the only fitting memorial to these imposters is to spit in their eye.
Still, if we stop hoping and dreaming and demanding change, it will stay like this forever. Balzac said "behind every great fortune lies a great crime." He got that right.
Let's prosecute those crimes and throw the snake-oil salesmen out of office. And let's not let go of our dreams.
My guess it's here to stay
All we can do is cope
Living with it day by day
Here's the deal: Wearing masks, avoiding crowds, staying a safe distance apart is how our lives will be lived going forward well into the future. It no longer is reasonable to hope for a return to "normal." Because this way of conducting our affairs is what's normal now.
A huge question looming over us is how will we continue to connect with each other? How do we continue our relationships when we can't see friends in person?
I'm not the answer guy; I'm the not sure guy. All I can speak of is what's happening in my own social life. Friends are calling, friends are emailing, friends are texting or posting comments on this Facebook feed. Sometimes they drop by, masked, and stay for a chat.
I'm reaching out to many people, seeking to renew acquaintances that had languished. It is wonderful to reconnect, especially when the silence between us is marked by years.
It's never too late to renew a friendship as long as you are both still alive. I don't know what happens after people die -- I'm not sure about that.
As time passes, so do friends.
In February I lost one, not to Covid-19 but to cancer. We had worked closely together on a daily basis for seven years after sharing the loss of a mutual friend to cancer in 2013.
We were both there at his side in his final days. Then she and I found some comfort in being in touch every day, producing the stories our friend would have loved.
When I was very ill myself last fall, she came to my house with another friend and visited with me. She wanted to help take care of me in case I wouldn't be getting better. We didn't know then. Soon after, I learned the horrible news that she was herself very ill and we started corresponding weekly by email.
My plan was to visit her as soon as I was well enough. I assumed she would get better. But that never happened. She just got worse and worse and then she died. As for me I got better and lived on.
What stays with me is that I never got to tell her goodbye.
***
Another old friend tracked me down yesterday after a gap of years. She was a colleague at Wired twenty-five years ago, a beautiful soul who is as spiritual as anyone I know, though I don't think she practices any specific religion.
As my second marriage broke up, I was broken up, and she took over to help me find a flat where I could live on my own and have my youngest children with me three nights a week. I put in a bunkbed for the boys and a single bed for my daughter. They were 9, 7 and 5 that year, which was 2003.
I got good at doing laundry, making school lunches, and cooking big dinners.
My friend got to know the kids and she also attended my oldest daughter's wedding a few years later. She got to know my girlfriends as they came and went from my life; we'd often have brunch in the Mission.
We worked together professionally on an especially creative project with mutual friends and made sure we stayed in touch the best we could as the years began to pass.
Now we are finally back together; maybe we'll find a project to work on again, and I'm so happy she is back, present in my life. I love her.
***
Just connect. That's what we need to do. If there is one enduring motive behind my words in these essays it is about human connection through time and under strain. We're living this pandemic; it's not going away. It's here to stay. All we can do is cope and live it day by day.
Part of that connecting with each other now is to recognize and support those marching for justice. We are at a critical juncture in that regard. Last night, I watched some of the documentary "1968" about the tumultuous events of the year I reached voting age. It was 1968 when a group of us went to Memphis to cover the sanitation workers' strike just before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed there. It was 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed. It was 1968 when campuses and cities erupted in violence at the pent-up frustration about the slow pace of progress on civil rights and the lack of an end to the war in Vietnam.
It feels like we have reached another such turning point in 2020. It's taken over half a century to get back to the place we were then. Will this time turn out differently?
This time around, there are more people in the streets, most of them young. Three generations of youths have come and gone since 1968. Many struggle to stay true to their youthful ideals in a society that features the greatest inequality of wealth in history.
Millionaires are a dime a dozen; billionaires are everywhere. Thanks to the Supreme Court's horrible decision, Citizen's United, these richest people can buy elections if they wish to. Forget the Russians, Ukrainians, and Chinese -- look at the guy at the top of the hill.
It's no accident that in a time of unchecked wealth for a few and widespread misery for the many, we end up not with true leaders but money-grubbing, narcissistic snake-oil peddlers holding high office. There isn't a single major politician today who deserves a statue.
As the torn bits of our dreams float away with the wind, the only fitting memorial to these imposters is to spit in their eye.
Still, if we stop hoping and dreaming and demanding change, it will stay like this forever. Balzac said "behind every great fortune lies a great crime." He got that right.
Let's prosecute those crimes and throw the snake-oil salesmen out of office. And let's not let go of our dreams.
"You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one"
And the world will be as one"
-- John Lennon
-30-
-30-
Sunday, July 05, 2020
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