A Film About Clotheslines

I grew up in the bucolic far reaches of the greater Pittsburgh area in western Pennsylvania. I always enjoyed those lazy days of summer, when gentle breezes punctuated the thick humidity, making the climate bearable, sometimes even pleasant.

My family was large, and even though we owned an electric clothes dryer, my mother often hung sheets and other laundry to dry on clotheslines strung across the length of our small backyard. I enjoyed the lingering sweet smell and the warmth of the sun left behind on the laundry as I helped my mother fold.

I had forgotten about those sensations and about the calming effect of seeing laundry billowing in the wind, having long ago surrendered myself entirely to the convience of the modern dryer. Indeed, for many years I had even adopted the practice of sending my laundry out to be laundered. As a lawyer, my time had become too valuable to waste it on doing my own laundry.

Then in 2005 I married a German-Austrian. He moved to the US, and we made our home in New York City. Now we were sending all of our household laundry out to be laundered. My husband seemed torn. He could appreciate the luxury of having someone else launder our clothes. At the same time, he missed the stiffness in his shirts and the crunchy quality of towels hung dried, as he’d dried his things in Europe. I had problems understanding his perspective, until we moved to Germany in 2009.

In German households, there are two very common conditions with respect to laundry. First, most households, even those based in rental apartments, have washing machines. (Laundry mats, in fact, are quite scarce.) Second, most households with washing machines do not have dryers. 

That factor alone, that I do not use (or pay someone to use) a dryer for drying my laundry, greatly reduces my ecological footprint. 

So why all this talk about laundry and dryers? 

About ten years ago, I met Alex Lee, the founder of Project Laundry List, an organization that promotes clothesline drying to reduce energy consumption and impacts to the environment. The PLL website describes its founding, “in 1995 when Dr. Helen Caldicott gave a speech at a Middlebury College symposium in which she said, ‘If we all did things like hang out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry.’”

Dr. Caldicott’s statement was not hyperbole. However, hanging our clothes out to dry is easier said that done in the US these days.

A new film by White Lantern Films called “Drying for Freedom” very eloquently explains a few of the obstacles. The film begins with historical roots of the American culture of “living better electrically,” a cultural phenomonom born in the 1950’s thanks to a targeted  marketing campaign by General Electric. And who better to spoonfeed it to us than Ronald and Nancy Reagan who appeared in GE’s television ad campaigns. Combine the persuasiveness of the advertising campaign with a form of urban planning, hinged on strict conformity rules set by home owners associations, and hang drying’s days were numbered.

According to the film, the US has over 300,000 home owners associations (over 40,000 in California alone). It is a dominent form of modern living in the US, and I imagine that living in these housing developments is a symbol of financial stability and the staid American middle class. The rules set by these HMAs, put in simple terms, dictate how people maintain their properties. Besides banning clotheslines, they may dictate the color of one’s home and other cosmetic factors intended to maintain the orderly look of the community and thereby keep property values high.

After the film takes us on a tour of the historical underpinnings of clothes drying and clothesline bans, we meet several people across the US who are in the midst of battles to uphold their right to hang dry. The film finishes in India, where our energy appetite is put into a global perspective.

In arriving at that global perspective, let’s begin with a statistic: The US population is just four percent of the world population. The US population uses 25 percent of the world’s energy. (This statistic comes from the film, and I believe it to be roughly accurate.)

Several years ago when I was teaching at Tufts University, I traveled to India to attend a conference. The trip fell during the dark, short days of December. I landed in New Dehli, then traveled by chartered bus into the late evening deep into Rajistan province. I remember marveling at how dark the landscape became as the sun dipped below the horizon. Across the pitch black, I could see flickering lights, candles and oil lamps that lit the multitudes of homes without electricity. My mind wandered to a statistic I’d heard in a presentation by one of my students: If you hang your clothes in a closet and keep your food in a refrigerator, you are wealthier than 75 perecent of the people in the world. I don’t remember the provinence of the stastic, but its force brought tears to my eyes as I looked across miles and miles of twinkling lights.

India has a population of approximately 1.2 billion people. According to the film 400 million Indians -- nearly 100 million more than the entire US population -- live without electricity. Just imagine if the entire population of India, a country that is rapidly industrializing, had the same appetite for electricity as the US. It would be a catastrophe of epic proportions. Yet, why should the US and the global north be entitled unbridled use of world resources to the exclusion of the rest of the world? The simple answer is that they shouldn’t. 

The world is in desperate need of more sustainable and just models of energy usage, and we all can help. Start by seeing the film. “Drying for Freedom” is being screened in venues in the US and beyond during “Hanging Out Festivals” between April 19 and May 5. 

How to Purge Those Unwanted Friends

I typically blog about politics, social justice, or other weighty subjects. Today I'd like to take up a weighty subject that perhaps is even more important, as it involves our daily lives directly and intimately. What I'm talking about is our friendships. How do we end the friendships we no longer have use for?

You may recall my trademarked method, the "The Eady Method: How to Purge a Friend." (Okay, I didn't trademark it, but if you've known me for more than 15 years, you've probably heard me talk about it. No?)

My method provides three types of friend purges:

• Hard purge
• Soft purge
• Graduated-hard purge

Let's review. The hard purge is when you tell the friend not to contact you anymore. Direct, confrontational, clear. (Example: "I don't like you. We're no longer friends. I never want to hear from you again.")

The soft purge is good for a more delicate situation, where you may want to avoid the confrontation. To implement the soft purge, you simply don't return the problematic friend's calls, emails, or texts. Eventually, the soon-to-be-ex friend gets the message that you no longer wish to be in contact with him or her. It's a bit of a softer hit, which may be kinder, but the downside is that if the friend is a bit dense, he or she never gets a completely clear indication that you're finished with him or her.

(I should note that I created my before we were online to the degree that we are today. I've adapted the method to change with the times, as you will see when I explain the expansion of my method.)

The graduated-hard purge  (also known as the semi-hard purge) is when your target friend calls you, and you say, "Don't call me at work." When later the friend calls you at home, you say, "Don't call me at home." Likewise, when the friend calls on your mobile, you say, "Don't call me on my mobile. You see what happens here, right? The friend has no where to call you, and you have effected a hard purge, though a bit less efficiently than the regular hard purge.

Well pupils, after many years of successfully using my method, I have come up with a new way to purge those pesky unwanted friends. I call it the hostile soft purge. Allow me to explain.

We now live in a digital age, where we communicate not only on telephones or in e-mails. Yes, today we function in a society with an online component where we allow or invite friends, family, and acquaintances to participate in our digital lives. Now we've got Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Pinterist and lord knows what else where people follow our lives and exist in our cyber circles. 

I recently wanted to purge a friend, and I quickly realized that in this case a normal soft purge wouldn't do. I wanted to quietly disappear from the friend's life, but I wanted that friend to know about it. What did I do? 

Obviously, the first step was to unfriend him on Facebook. Let me tell you, it was a good feeling. Next, I blocked him on Skype. That was followed by a rigorous cleansing of all traces of him in my computer's address book, my google address book, and my mobile phone address book, and I deleted all e-mails and text messages. Let me tell you friends, it was a true catharsis. I managed to be hostile without having to deal with the mess of a confrontation.

And now friends, I invite you to use my new purge method, as well as the old of course -- completely free of charge. Please tell your friends. With my new and improved Eady Method, we can indeed heal the world through relieving ourselves of unwanted friends.

Enjoy!

Letter to My Friend to Jin

I am horrible at keeping in touch with my friends. Months will go by with at least five or six e-mails from my dearest friends waiting in my inbox for my reply. During the lag period, however, my friends are always with me in my mind, as I beset myself with guilt, which in the grand scheme of things is a net positive because I am always thinking about my friends. Right? Whether I fully subscribe to my own crazy logic or not, the lag time permits me to assemble a bundle of experiences that I report to my friends exhaustively. They tend to forgive me for droning on, and they often perpetuate the cycle themselves by waiting until they have the time to sit down and write me a corresponding tome in reply.

Below is an excerpt of one such lengthy e-mail I sent to my friend Jin who lives in Manhattan.

My dear Jin,

Sorry I haven't replied in such a long time. I've been in an exhausting six-month "German for professionals" language course, compliments of the European Union. I don't spend a dime on the course, but once you land a spot (there's a waiting list), you're obligated to spend five hours a day, five days a week for sixth months in a classroom. They take attendance. Gah. I have an exam in two weeks, and it's going to be a monster. Besides the fact if I don't pass the exam, the last  six months of my life will be completely invalidated, the other annoying thing about the course is that this week and last week, we have spent grueling hours "learning" Microsoft Office in German. Really people? Isn't making footnotes the same process in German as in English? I'm actually skipping class today because the temperature outside is 93 degrees F. We do have the unexpected luxury of air conditioning in the instruction room (probably because the computers can make the room pretty warm even without the extreme heat outside), but not on the public transit that would take me there. Hey, I was looking for a reason to skip class, and I found one. End of story.

My teacher these two weeks of computer instruction hails from the former East Germany, from East Berlin no less. The cultural divide between East and West Germans is very real. The East Germans were not exposed much to foreign cultures beyond Soviet culture, except for maybe Vietnamese immigrants who emigrated to East Germany, and I'm guessing mostly East Berlin. As such, my teacher can't help but look at me any time he has a reason to discuss Africa. Like, one day a classmate (who happens to be from Egypt, so yes, he is technically an African) came to class late.  So the teacher goes off on an endless ramble about how Germans are punctual, unlike other cultures, taking Africa as an example. I happen to be the only remaining black person in my class (earlier there were two African women who no longer come). So the teacher usually looks at me, at times he has actually pointed at me even, when he has found a reason to discuss Africa. Being of African ancestry, I am naturally delighted to be associated with Africa under a whole range of circumstances. But since I am not African, this particular association is clearly misplaced.

Indeed, living in Germany is strange experience for a person of color. In one sense, people of color are occasionally regarded as minor celebrities. For example, I hear that in the hip circles, it is considered very cool to be from a Spanish-speaking country, especially from Latin America. And I have managed to find some very dynamic places where Africans and other people of color congregate socially and culturally. But there is no denying that I'm living in a troubled land where matters involving race are concerned.

The other day, I was on a tram that runs past my house. I take the tram every weekday around 1:00 in the afternoon to get to my class. I got on one Friday afternoon, and sat down near three guys dressed in workmen's clothing and drinking beer. As an aside, in Berlin, it's legal to drink in public. Though eating and drinking on public transit is verboten, people do it all the time. Just like in New York. Probably just like anywhere. Anyway, I didn't think anything of these guys sitting on a Friday afternoon in a half-empty tram drinking beers to celebrate the start of the weekend. Absolutely normal activity in Berlin. As I was situating myself in the seat, I heard them say something loudly and boisterously about bananas. My racism radar was triggered, but since they weren't looking at me, I didn't think much of it. I was only riding two stops, and my stop came up quickly after that. I stood up and crowded by the door just like the others who were getting off. That's when I heard them say really loudly in German and laughing, "WHERE IS THE APE?" I didn't do anything, in part because I had to get off right away, and in part because as a foreigner I wasn't sure what would be prudent to do.

Those sorts of things don't happen often here, but often enough. One day in my language class we were discussing prejudice. (The discussion was led by the primary teacher of the course, not the computer teacher, just to be clear.)  My class is populated with immigrants, at the time, from Thailand, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Columbia, Kenya, Uganda, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Latvia, along with me from the USA. During the discussion, every single one of the class members of darker complexions, excluding the students from Central and Eastern Europe, said they had encountered some form of hostility or hatred in Berlin. One of the African women told me that she doesn't take her half-German/half-Ugandan toddler to certain playgrounds because she can feel when something isn't right and in some places it's just not safe. I agree with her 100 percent. When you're around racists (also known here as "right-wing extremists"), the hatred is palpable. No one should be exposed to that, especially not a child.

Nevertheless, Germany is full of Germans of color as well as immigrants of color. So it's all really confusing for me. I have a white German friend who lives in my neighborhood (in the former East  Berlin, but over-gentrified and so yuppie that it's decidedly unhip to live here) who told me that her friends of color refuse to visit her apartment because they don't want to come to the former East. Eastern Germany, which surrounds Berlin, is where most of the right-wing extremist activity is located. Berlin is something of a safe haven, but not entirely, especially with respect to the working-class white neighborhoods of the former East Berlin.

Anyway, Germany is a place that is constantly contradicting itself. When I first arrived here, I would walk into a restaurant I'd never been in before and I would suddenly be aware that it had become so silent that I could hear a pin drop. It seemed as though everyone stopped eating and talking so that they could gawk at me. I don't notice it anymore, and it turns out that the silence and gawking is usually, in fact, positive feedback. Most Germans are quite welcoming of people of color. I would go so far as to say that the majority of romantic relationships of people of African ancestry, myself included, are with white Germans. African Americans, Africans, and many Asians -- our spouses and partners tend overwhelmingly to be white Germans.

But the country was shaken last fall, when it was discovered that a series of unsolved murders of mostly Turkish men all over the country over the last 10 years, were committed by a neo-Nazi terrorist cell embedded in the eastern German city of Zwickau. Since then, it has been further revealed that the German domestic intelligence service (counterpart to the FBI), the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, may have played a role in the murders. I heard that one of the murders was caught on surveillance video in an Internet cafe. In the video, a BND agent can be seen sitting at a computer, then after the victim is shot in the head, the BND agent gets up and calmly walks out of the establishment.

Several heads have rolled, including top officials of the BND. But parliamentary hearings are ongoing. A good friend of mine who is of Turkish ancestry has invited me to sit in on some of the hearings with her as part of a group of activists and academics who are observing. It seems that I am about to finally find my footing in the ranks of anti-racism movement in Berlin.

So it's pretty exciting and disturbing here in modern-day Germany. I'd say the difference between racism here and racism in the US is that, for the most part, society and media are outraged and embarrassed by instances of racism. The racists seem to be on the fringe of society, excepting the few that have been elected to state and local government offices in eastern Germany. The Constitutional Court is right now considering whether it can formally ban the neo-Nazi political party.

Of course, I say that racists are on the fringe not knowing what other atrocities are being sanctioned in secret by the government. Alright, if you follow any of the links I've provided, it will appear that I'm using the word "fringe" very loosely. Reports of racially-motivated assaults and other major crime in Europe are popping up in the media more frequently it seems to me. And it's not unique to Germany. Even countries that are perceived to be more politically progressive (let's not talk about whaling) are home to racists and xenophobes --  take Norway for example where a right-wing extremist shot up a children's camp last year killing 77 people.

By way of comparison, in my opinion the racists in the US are as much part of the mainstream as they are a part of the fringe. They are educated, they have money, and they vote. I wonder who's funding the effort to expand a memorial celebrating a founder of the Ku Klux Klan in historic Selma, Alabama. (By the way, the KKK is now here in Germany, a tragic cultural export of the US.)

Admittedly, in the US the language is my mother tongue, the culture is mine, and I know my rights. I don't know that these factors make living in the U.S. any easier than living in Germany, but I do feel a sense of security in the US in ways that I may never feel secure in Germany. In the US, I  know where to go for support against racism, I know how to object and be outraged, and I know where to find like-minded people.  On the other hand, living here and seeing first hand how a country atones, heals, and redefines itself after [insert your preferred euphemism for the Holocaust here, as words cannot adequately express the depth of the evil and grief begat in the name of this country]  and how two countries, East and West Germany, become one gives me lessons in history, culture, war, survival, and human nature every day. In Berlin, I accidentally trip across powerful historical places on my way to the grocery store down the street. Through the most mundane and unexpected circumstances, I'm intellectually stimulated in ways I could never experience in the US. Life here sometimes is like watching social change in over-drive. It's vibrant and amazing. And yes, sometimes life here is also a bit scary.

Jin, I hope all is going well. I miss hanging out and kibitzing with you. I hope we get a chance to do that in the not-too-distant future.

Lots of love,
v

Racism 'happens': Inexplicable events haunt GOP primary - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

I read this amazingly insightful piece on Al Jazeera. As an American living abroad, I have had opportunity to see my country placed in a larger context. It's been an incredibly important experience in my life. This article explains one reason why.

Racism 'happens': Inexplicable events haunt GOP primary - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Weapon of Mass Cultural Destruction

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina pummeled parts of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, I was part of a panel discussion hosted by the New York City bar association to talk about whether New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward should be redeveloped. Like it was yesterday, I can remember my temperature rising as one of my fellow-panelists suggested that for the sake of restoring the ecology of the area, the Lower Ninth Ward should not be rebuilt. I squarely disagreed with him.

New Orleans is a place of unique American history, and this is not just because of the music or food or the French influence, although these things are indeed remarkable. New Orleans is also historically significant because it was an important port in the Atlantic slave trade, while at the same time free blacks, many of whom were educated and owned property, were permitted to live in society, unrestricted, with whites and enslaved people. Nowhere else in the antebellum South was this sort of co-mingling tolerated. This societal richness provided the setting that facilitated the development of New Orleans' famous lavish culture of food, music, and joie de vivre. This is not just history of the region and not just black history. It is American history. The inadequate levee system that led to the flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward was not just an assault on the people who were immediately impacted, and it was not just an assault on New Orleans. It was an assault on our American history and culture. Many people, particularly my fellow environmentalists, may disagree with me on this point, but I believe the Lower Ninth Ward should be restored and protected with an effective levee system. Rebuilding is the right thing to do in the interest as all of us who have taken proud ownership of New Orleans and its special role in our nation's history.

I feel the similarly about the way the war in Iraq led to the permanent destruction of cultural artifacts in that region. The archeological artifacts found in the ancient Mesopotamia region lying between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, partially in Iraq, are a part of world history. Our world cultural resources took another hit this week when the Turkish government approved the controversial Ilisu hydroelectric dam on the upper reaches of Tigris River, inundating the ancient town of Hasankeyf near the Turkish-Iraqi border and destroying more than 200 Muslim and Christian archeological sites, only 20 percent of which have been surveyed. We all should be outraged.

For weeks leading up to the final decision to approve this project, the second largest dam in Turkey, Kurds and human rights activists in Europe staged protests to bring attention to this proposed dam, in no small part due to the fact that Kurdish communities in Turkey would be disproportionately impacted by the flooding. In total, as many as 78,000 people may be displaced.

Adding insult to injury, the Turkish government, which approved the dam in spite of an astounding 20 years of sustained opposition, has committed to building a new town for the displaced residents and a cultural theme park for tourists. The region identified for the new town, near the towns of Batman and Diyarbakir, is a region where there has been a good deal of recent unrest between Kurds and security forces. I can understand the many reasons why people find this alternative unsuitable.

Of course, water politics is a tricky business under the best of circumstances. Just look at southern California where about half of its water comes from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away. The rights to Colorado River water are, indeed, controversial and worth a lot of money if you think about southern California's notorious droughts and the risks they pose to a highly profitable regional economy. Disputes of water rights can, no doubt, be as volatile as disputes over oil. The Ilisu dam is expected to play a key role in supplying water to the entire Middle East, including parts of Israel.

Even in the hypothetical absence of the issue of unique archeological treasures, should the Kurdish people of Turkey, people without a national identity, be expected to sacrifice their homes on demand? Is it just for Turkey (and for that matter business entities in Britain, Switzerland, and Austria who will be doing the actual construction, financial, and engineering work) to make money off the backs of this Kurdish community? I certainly wouldn't want to see this happen to my hometown.

I am not sure of the answers. Admittedly, it is a complex issue, and as an outsider, an American living in Germany, I'm certainly not the most competent person to come up with the best answers.

I will, however, take this moment to quote my favorite t-shirt. It was sold as a part of a 90's era campaign to retain affirmative action at California's public colleges and universities, a battle that was, sadly, lost long ago. It is quoted from a letter written by the American author James Baldwin to civil rights activist Angela Davis who was in jail at the time. Baldwin wrote with great insight, "If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."

What did Baldwin mean by this? He meant that if an injustice happens to one person, it can happen to anyone. It is happening to us all. We're in this together.

The Attack of the Icelandic Volcano

Since I live in Berlin and within the travel zone directly impacted by the ongoing Icelandic volcanic activity, I thought I'd write a brief post from the trenches, so to speak.

Let me begin by saying that the sky in Berlin is a flawless spring blue for the third day in a row. We are too far from Iceland to have any visibility impacts. Likewise, there are no anticipated volcanic odors or respiratory impacts at this distance. Away from the pandemonium that has befallen its airports, life is normal and pleasant here in Berlin. (Icelanders, unfortunately, have a distinctly more calamitous story to tell.)

My sister and her husband, who live in Los Angeles, happen to be stranded in Paris. If money is no issue, Paris is one of the better places to be stranded. True. Nevertheless, the volcanic ash problem coupled with a strike that shut down rail travel in France last week forced some travelers to resort to wildly circuitous and expensive alternatives. A business colleague of my brother-in-law, for example, who was trying to get from Paris back to his home in Israel resorted to the following route: (1) A 361-mile taxicab ride from Paris to Zurich followed by, (2) a 552-mile bus ride from Zurich to Rome followed by, (3) a fairly standard, hopefully unremarkable flight from Rome to Tel Aviv.

I continue to sit next to the radio to hear the ongoing BBC broadcasts concerning the situation, and I sit next to the phone with the vague hope that my sister and her husband will call to say they've been advised to take some ridiculous trajectory to Los Angeles through Berlin, a mere 425 miles in the wrong direction.

Indeed, as the days of uncertainty languish, European travel and commerce becomes further lodged in this unprecedented bizarre state of chaos. For the sake of my sister and her husband, for the sake of the environment and the health of Icelanders, for the sake of the global economy that can really do without another big setback, I hope the crisis abates soon.

My experience with the "public option"

I am an American who has for the past year been a legal resident of Germany. As a legal resident, I am required to have health insurance in order to receive and maintain my residency visa. My husband and I have the so-called "public option," which here inGermany is often regarded as the best available. As the U.S. Congress and the White House struggle to agree on ways to improve what has been called the worst healthcare system in the industrialized world, I thought I might offer up my experience with private health insurance in the U.S. and the public-private insurance system here in Germany.

I begin with the brief story of an Australian classmate of mine in my German language class who was hospitalized for a week in a German hospital. After a week full of medical services, which included a battery of tests required to diagnose her and determine her course of treatment, she was released. She opened her wallet as she was leaving and asked nervously, "how much?" The hospital representative smiled and said to her, "You must be American." My classmate replied that no, she was in fact Australian. The hospital rep said, "Oh. We get this question all the time from Americans. You don't owe us anything. It was our pleasure to serve you."

My Australian friend had health insurance, and that insurance information was probably collected when she was admitted to the hospital. Her visit was not free, it was paid for entirely by her insurance. Nevertheless, she remarked how nice it was to have her insurance cover her entire visit and how nice it was for her to be able to return to her apartment to complete her recovery without having to worry about a bill coming in the mail.

When we landed here a year ago, in part as a more affordable place to ride out the global financial recession, our health insurance in the U.S. had lapsed. In Germany, it is illegal to not have health insurance. However, we were determined to get the public option because my husband who was born and raised here had it as a child (long before the privatization of healthcare), and my husband's family had advised us that it was the highest quality insurance available in Germany. The hitch was, as I understood it, if we were ever at any point covered by private health insurance, we would not be eligible for the public option. Our American health insurance didn't count against us, since only private insurance is offered in the U.S.

We played it fast and loose with no insurance in Germany for about a month while we negotiated with the public insurance company. There were questions about how my husband had been insured when he lived in the Netherlands and Switzerland. And, of course, there were income questions. The public option is based on a sliding scale of affordability. And if you can't afford it, the government will pay. We had no proof of income at the time, and that factor made things a bit of a challenge.

During this month, I ran out of a medication I take daily. In the U.S., a 30-day supply of this medication would cost $450 without health insurance. I knew from experience when a momentary glitch in my health insurance led me to believe that I would have to shell out that shocking price from my own pocket. Fortunately, the problem was resolved. But knowing the cost in America worried my husband and me that we would have to pay the same in Germany. We managed to get our health insurance coverage by phone, but we hadn't been issued our cards yet. My husband went to the pharmacy with the prescription that a doctor had been kind enough to give me without proof of insurance. The pharmacy apologized and told us we'd have to pay full price without proof of insurance and seek reimbursement from our health insurance. Without asking them the price, my husband came home asking me how much I thought he should take out of the ATM. €450? Really? He trudged back to the pharmacy. Again apologizing, they asked for the full price. "That'll be €25, but you can get that back from the insurance company." We were shocked. The retail price was about the same (notwithstanding the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the euro) as our co-pay in America.

When we finally got our insurance cards, we learned the system works like this:

• Every calendar quarter, we are required to pay a co-pay of €10 to the first doctor we see. That doctor, in turn, is the doctor who writes our referrals for the that quarter -- no questions asked. We can see any doctor we'd like, and that quarterly €10 is our only co-pay throughout the course of the year.
• Our prescriptions are for the most part free. I don't entirely understand the prescription part, but on rare occasions we have to pay, typically under €5.
• Our monthly premium for two people is around €250, which employers are required by law to pay. Since my husband and I are freelancers, we pay this on our own. That's €3,000 per year, and it includes basic dental. By contrast, friends of mine in the U.S. who are also self-employed have received a quote of $2,000 per month for two people or $24,000 per year.

Hospitalization is covered entirely. Emergency rooms (which we've already used) are covered. Alternative treatments such as acupuncture and doctor-prescribed massage or physical therapy are covered.

I should also dispel the rumor that public health insurance creates long lines of people waiting hours for treatment. I have seen many doctors in the last year, and I have never had to wait. The system runs very efficiently. The one time I've had to see a doctor without an appointment, the receptionist told me I'd have to wait until the doctor had a break in his schedule. That ended up being about 15 minutes.

Admittedly, I have no experience with private health insurance in Germany. But with the strict limits on who is eligible for the public option, my sense is that the private health insurance market is thriving.

It saddens me to see the debate around healthcare in the U.S. People like my friends I mentioned earlier -- hard-working, educated people who own their own home, pay taxes and who want to pay for health insurance -- should be able to afford health insurance. The U.S. system is miserably broken.

I want to live in a country where I know I can afford to be sick should that happen, without my having to worry about losing a home or having to go without treatment. Unfortunately, right now my own country is failing to provide that basic comfort. Americans should not be forced to look beyond our own borders for reasonably priced healthcare, whether we resort to looking next door to Canada or across the Atlantic to Germany. Healthcare is a problem that can be fixed or at the very least greatly improved. Congress needs to stop the fear-mongering and help us achieve a healthcare system that is a successful model to which other countries aspire rather than seen globally as disaster to be avoided.

Obama and the Dresden Zoo

The controversy swarming around the Dresden Zoo naming a primate after U.S. President Barack Obama, conjures the memory of a similar uproar earlier this year when the New York Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas of two police officers shooting a chimpanzee with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Like so many others, I interpreted this cartoon as a bigoted suggestion that President Obama is a primate – an animal of less than human intelligence. Huffington Post writer Sam Stein explained the implication concisely in his February 18, 2009 piece -- the cartoon implies “the [Obama] stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it. Others believe it compares the president to a rabid chimp."

The New York Post later issued a statement by editor Col Allan defending the publication of the cartoon as "clear parody of a current news event" that "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy.” Out of fairness to the Post, I should also mention that days before the Post published the cartoon, police shot a chimpanzee dead after mauling a woman. The cartoon, Mr. Allan said, was a parody of this event. Ultimately, New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch apologized for the cartoon.

Regardless of the intent of the Dresden Zoo or the New York Post or its cartoonist Sean Delonas, even dancing lightly around the issue of a black man represented as a primate is like walking through a seismic zone loaded with land mines.

There is a long and tattered history around the cultural stereotype of the black man as a primate. At the root of the controversy is the notion that black people are evolutionarily and intellectually inferior to white people. Slave owners of the U.S. south conveniently used the argument that blacks were sub-human animals and apelike as a justification for ownership of black slaves as chattel and justification for of slavery, itself.



Long after the abolition of slavery in America, Charles Carroll used this idea as the central premise for his 1900 book, The Negro Beast.

These theories and sensitivities may seem like relics of a flawed belief system of the long ago past, but they are not. Last year a team of sociologists headed by UCLA social psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff released the shocking results of a series of six studies over five years on subconscious racist belief systems. In sum, through word and image association tests, the researchers found that study subjects were overwhelmingly likely to associate the image of a black man with that of an ape. Goff’s team demonstrated that the cultural stereotype of black men as apes has survived the abolition of slavery and the election of a black U.S. president. (The blog “stuff white people do,” written by a self-described “white guy, trying to find out what that means” published a provocative opinion piece on and summary of the studies.)

The Dresden Zoo may have not known the painful history of blacks being associated with primates –humanlike but not human. Of course, these stereotypes are culture specific and do not always translate the same in a different context. In other words, a German zoo may not understand the offensive connotation that may be drawn readily in the U.S. I am willing to give the Dresden Zoo the benefit of the doubt. In fact, the intent of the zoo is not nearly as important as the subliminal assumptions evoked by naming a primate after a black man. And using these assumptions of black inferiority, intellectual and otherwise, one can easily extrapolate the potential for greater consequences.

I am happy to see that the Dresden Zoo was willing to quickly renamed its baby mandrill; and I acknowledge that naming the mandrill Obama was probably the zoo’s gesture to honor President Obama who recently visited Dresden. Nevertheless, I hope that this series of events at the Dresden Zoo is a sign that we, as a global society, are capable of vanquishing racial stereotypes for good.

The Complexion of Racism in America

I went for a jog in the park today and came upon some waterfalls where kids were squealing with joy, splashing in the warm summer sun. It reminded me of the palpable excitement I felt as a child about to jump into a pool on a hot day. I’m sure anyone who liked water as a child has a similar memory.

A group of camp kids in Eastern Pennsylvania probably felt that excitement before it was abruptly choked off, and they were ejected from a private swim club. As I understand it, the group of black children from the Creative Steps Day Camp was promptly discharged from the grounds as if they had no right to be there. One child said he overheard a woman, presumably a club member, asking why all the black children were at the club. The child said the woman thought a black child might do something to her own white child. Reportedly, once the black children entered the pool, the white children abruptly exited.

Creative Steps Day Camp had paid something in the neighborhood of $2000 so its campers would have a place to swim one afternoon per week for the course of the summer. The camp’s money was returned in full after the incident.

This incident reminds me of a similar affront directed at the legendary black performer Dorothy Dandridge, who after sticking her toe into a pool at a hotel where she was performing, suffered the humiliation of the management draining the pool to avoid contaminating white swimmers. Dorothy Dandridge died in 1965, 44 years before the children from the Creative Steps Day Camp were expelled from the Valley Swim Club.

For how many more decades will black children in America be taught that they are inferior to white people?

At 47, I carry with me deep scars of racial discrimination and rejection. My first scar etched its way into my consciousness when I was five years old. I was in kindergarten. During cookie time, one of my white classmates began rummaging through a trash can so that she could eat the cookies other children had discarded. Moments after I walked over to her to warn her that those cookies were unsanitary, the teacher intervened. I remember telling my mother the story when she asked me why I had an “unsatisfactory” mark on my report card. I told her I hadn’t eaten the cookies; it was Barbara H, and the teacher blamed the wrong person.

I was in second grade the time I explained to another white classmate how the word “our” is properly pronounced; the pronunciation differed from that of the word “are.” My teacher heard the chatter in the back of the room and confronted us. When my classmate explained the nature of the discussion, the teacher told her in a hushed tone, “colored people speak differently from white people.” I sat silently in my anger, afraid to defend myself to the authority figure that was my grossly mistaken teacher.

I shared these stories over brunch with my husband, and I felt my eyes well with tears. My stomach felt numb, still all these years later.

Just as these childhood experiences in the 60’s and 70’s misshaped my perception of who I am today, and challenged my notions of what I am capable of achieving in life, so do these experiences negatively impact the children of the Creative Steps Day Camp. They are as helpless now as I was then.

For years I was functioning naively under the illusion that the burst of racial and ethnic diversity showered on the U.S. over the last few decades had morphed U.S. society into a place of racial tolerance. Even as I was experiencing racism in school, my classes in my elementary school in Western Pennsylvania taught me how America was a wonderful melting pot of cultures. Through my pain, I was proud of that America.

My pride for America quickly dissipated into disappointment years later when I visited with my sister in north-central Pennsylvania. We were together in a shopping mall when my three-year old niece became captivated by a little blonde girl around her age. My niece fell into what appeared to be a trance. She followed the little girl everywhere, but didn’t dare speak to her. My niece behaved as though she was not worthy of speaking to the girl. Instead, she seemed to silently worship the girl.

I mentioned my niece’s strange behavior to my sister. My sister surmised that the behavior had something to do with another little blonde girl refusing to play with my niece because, she told my three-year old niece, she was not allowed to play with black kids. I wanted to cry. Indignant, I replied, “I went through this when I was a child. This is not supposed to be happening 20 years later.” My niece was not supposed to be the same kid I was, struggling with identity, pain from within uncomfortably disguised outwardly with a smile.

Naturally, I am hoping that what happened at the Valley Swim Club will not leave a similar indelible scar on the psyche of those 65 day camp children. But beyond that, I wonder how those children can be expected to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” as we are taught to do as Americans, and contribute positively to our society when these children are taught at a young age that the color of their skin is a negative.

I now live in Germany where society is much more homogenously white than in the U.S. In Germany I am a minority in every sense of the word. Yet, I feel about as secure in my black skin here as I did in America. I am in a foreign country that is infamous for the basest form of racial hatred in modern history, and I don’t speak the language, and I feel as secure as I did in America. It shouldn’t add up, but it does. True, somewhere in my gut, I am always concerned that I will get on a tram and be confronted by a neo-Nazi. But in this country, I know who the villains are. The villains are the radical fringe, by definition; they have nothing in common with normal. In the U.S., on the other hand, the villains can and do pass themselves off as normal, masquerading as our school teachers and other authority figures we are taught respect. The kids from the Creative Steps Day Camp probably believe that the racists who expelled them are normal. And if those kids ever want to get anywhere in life, if they really want to pull themselves up by their boot straps, they’ve got to be accepted by these “normal” people. White people. Upper-class people. Adult people. Authority people.

Obviously, some people can squeak by with their self-worth in tact, against all odds. I am a living example. I was lucky. My niece, now 21, was lucky. Being lucky, however, does not come without deep emotional wounds and big psychotherapy bills. And do we really want to live in a society that requires children to rely on luck? I know we can do better than that.

The International Language of Black Folks

I grew up in an impoverished, semi-rural town in Western Pennsylvania, an area where there are almost no black families. In fact, my father's family was the first black family to settle in our town, shortly after the dawn of the 20th Century. (Perhaps this was training for living in Berlin now, where I welcome the infrequent sight of another black face.) Today, as it was when I was a child, the population in my home town is about 8,000 people with less than 1 percent of them being black.

While living in Pennsylvania, I spent my early years bubbling with excitement at the sight of another black person, whether in real life or in television. I think many blacks who have lived in white communities know this feeling. It's sort of the feeling I get upon seeing another black person on a ski slope. (I usually jab my husband in the ribs, point and exclaim, "BLACK PEOPLE!")

I was exposed to The Language when I left Pennsylvania to attend college in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has a robust black population. But my university community did not. I attended a white, elitist university that was over-populated by wealthy white kids with expensive cars and big bank accounts. Black students tended to be rich as well or they were athletes or immigrants. I was none of these. Truly out of place, I found one cure to my social isolation was to learn to speak The Language, the silent language of blacks living in the minority among a white majority. Walking across campus, other black students would smile at me. Some would nod. And people who were fluent in this language of proud acknowledgment actually said "hello." There were always the chilly few, however, who refused to speak the language. I'm sure they had their reasons.

Traveling in South America, I found that black South Americans knew this language, even if we didn't share a spoken language. What a wonderful feeling of belonging!

[Side note: When I was older, I locked my hair. I found that within the locked hair community, there was a whole new dialect of acknowledgment (pidgeon? creole?). Like the "high" form of The Language, I quickly embraced the dialect. I miss it now that I've cut off my locks.]

Today I'm even older still, and living in Berlin. After one month here, my spoken German is hardly recognizable as anything more than gibberish with an occasional gutteral "r". That will change, of course. But finding that my beloved language of mutual blackness is alive and strong in Europe emboldened me and gave me a familiar place in Berlin society.

Overall, I have found Berliners to be wholly welcoming of me and my six-foot-tall-natural-hair-black-womanness. (I reserve comment on young fascists that I've seen but not engaged.)

When I walk into a restaurant or cafe, I am someone special. I feel as though my very presence puts an imprimatur of coolness on the establishment as well as on my German-born husband. Admittedly, this is a form of tokenism, but I will not shun being cloaked in a presumption of fashionability and trendiness. (I'll let you in on a secret: I am actually a hopeless nerd -- a black nerd, no less. Second secret: Black nerds have their own special language of recognition. Don't blow the charade fellow black nerds!)

Sum total to date: Here in Berlin, being a celebrity is not something that only lives in my head. Other people have the same misperception of me.

Conclusion: Uncertain. Right now I am enjoying what may simply be the Obama Effect. Europeans like Obama (so far at least) + I resemble Obama in color = Europeans should like me. I think Ronald Reagan called it the "trickle down" effect.

In the end, I am happy to be in Berlin and overjoyed to be able to speak the silent language of blacks from the diaspora.

Plus it's springtime.

To All the Friends I've Loved Before

I've received an out-pouring of love from friends and family who are sad to hear of my plans to move to Berlin.  I am touched.

My plans to move to Berlin are rooted in many places.  First, four years in my adopted hometown, Brooklyn, have been some of the happiest and most interesting in my life.  I will always regard Brooklyn as my home.  Despite all the love I have for Brooklyn, living in New York City has been like running a race.  The short, two-block from the subway to my Manhattan office would often sour mood before I arrived at my office.  In fact, yesterday walking in Soho left me speechless, lifeless, battered.  And all of this frustration led to misdirected tensions. Did I really need to pick an argument with the rude stranger in the subway who was taking up two seats?  For the sake of my safety, I probably should have ridden the 20 minutes in silent indignation.

In sum, I need a break.  I need to eat stinky cheese and divine chocolates.  I need beer and sausages, which I will ask for in my childlike German.  I need mouthwatering Turkish and Greek food dished up by servers who are as excited about me sampling their food as I am about eating it.

But I'm also looking forward to living in a place where environmental conservation is imbedded in much of the daily life.  In Berlin, dark hallways burst with light only upon motion detected by motion detectors that turned the lights off when all was still, saving energy.  The escalators in the subways don't move unless someone stands on them.  Recycling is easy and walking and cycling are more popular than the automobile.

Finally, I can't wait to take winter vacations.  In the U.S., if I fly for two hours I'm in sunny Florida.  Not such a bad fate sweetened by the fact that my sister lives in Florida.  But two hours from Berlin is Rome or Spain (I'm guessing), and deeply discounted airfares that make such exotic trips as reasonable as a trip to Florida.  Indeed, I am seduced by the thought of flying for two hours and exiting the jetway into a different language, culture, history, and cuisine.  I am about to embark on a dreamy adventure I may not want to awaken from.

Of course the Holocaust and World War II live in the daily fabric of Berlin.  Walking down a street in a former Jewish neighborhood like Mitte can easily draw unfettered emotion.  But somehow, wallowinig in contrititon, Germans are trying to turn this grotesque history painted with genocide, war, and domination into the mirror image -- freedom and tolerance.  I love my country of birth, but I feel that some of the labels formerly attached to Germany more rightly belong here in present day.  Give me a moment to explain.

I face American racism virtually every day.  At times the racism is conspicuous and intentional. Usually it is almost imperceptible.  I readily recognize it; but many others are comfortably unaware and do not realize that racism can be silent or latent (also known as "dog whistle racism") and that this sort of racism is every bit as offensive and pernicious to people of color and society as a whole. I have tolerated it all my life, as have many of us of all races.   Though racism, anti-semitism, and all the ugly hatred that lives in the U.S. also resides in Germany, I find the European brand of racism to be quite different and something to be explored.

In any event, I am as buoyed by the ascension of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency as I am saddened by the barrage of racist statements, jokes, and death threats his campaign and election has generated.  It chagrins me deeply that many of them have been made by or facilitated by prominent people who are public role models.  For example, the website teamsarah.org, sponsored by a group of conservative Republican women, including actress Janine Turner who starred in one of my favorite shows of the 1990's, Northern Exposure, has permitted a string of racist comments about Barack Obama to be posted.  Barack Obama will be our president in a few days.  Would we show such disrespect to a white president?  (I suppose there was a good deal of disrespect shown for President Bush (43) concerning his intellect, but I do not recall any death threats.)  

My fellow Americans have shown the cold, hateful underbelly of our society, and I am hurt.

So what about Germany? I'm not sure.  But while I am there enjoying my stinky cheese and affordable vacations, I trust that I am leaving my country in good, capable hands under Barack Obama.  I leave with the hope that we can hold in our hearts the vision Barack Obama offered in his election-night speech of the country we want our children and grandchildren to enjoy 100 years from now.  It is only ours for but a minute.  We should save some clean air and natural resources for those to come and build for them an unwavering foundation of respect and tolerance.

Why I Hate American Express

Of all my credit cards, my American Express card was my favorite.  As I child, I fell for those television commercials with Karl Malden who warned us, "don't leave home without it."  And who wouldn't want to have the same card that Ellen DeGeneres and M. Knight Shamalayan carry?   I was overjoyed a couple of years ago when first received I got the amex that allowed me to earn frequent flyer miles.  Although this particular card had a revolving line of credit, I judiciously paid off the card monthly because THAT was the card I chose to have around if I ever ran into trouble.  I don't mess with advice from Karl Malden.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I traveled to Berlin.  Before I left, I contacted my bank to let them know I would be in Germany to ensure that I could access my funds.  This may sound like a touch of overkill, but the last time I was in Germany, my bank blocked my ATM card.  After several lengthy and expensive calls to New York and a fax my driver's license, I was able to transfer money into my husband's account.  For some reason, his ATM card issued from the same bank had no issues.  Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice I'm not as clever as I like to think I am, as they say.

When I got to Berlin and tried to use my ATM card the machine ate it, insisting I was not authorized to use it.  I made an immediate call to my bank at the rate of 99 cents a minute for roaming in Europe.  Now imagine talking to electronic voices and prompts at 99 cents a minute.  I did eventually reach a very concerned live person who quickly appreciated the dire nature of the problem and connected me to the head of the fraud department.  He was a very, very nice man who confirmed that my account had notes in it that I had called in advance to inform them I would be in Germany.  He gave me the direct dial line to his phone and suggested that I take money out on my credit card.  He realized this was little to offer, but it was the best he could do at that moment, and he offered to refund any fees immediately and post them to my account.  

I don't normally take PIN numbers for my credit cards because as I rule I never use them for cash advances.  So I would have to go into a bank and speak with a teller.   After going to several banks, I learned that in Germany, there is no such thing as a cash advance on your credit card.  Sensible.  I think Germany's credit crisis will be a tiny bit softer than ours here in the U.S.  But they offered to help me get cash if I had a PIN ...

My next idea was to go online to my amex account.  I mean, wouldn't that be the first card I should try?  VIP service, helping people in trouble, and so on?  That is what they've built their reputation on, of course.  When I went online, I learned that I could call them to get a PIN, and even access cash in my bank account through them.  Wow, amex was really good, I thought for a second.  A second later, I changed my mind with near hysterical incredulity.

Three different customer service representatives regretted to inform me, at the rate of 99 cents per minute, that my card had been unceremoniously cancelled two days before my call.  I sunk into a deep depression until I was slightly buoyed by company in my misery.  My sister and her husband, who have pristine credit and likewise have a perfect history with amex had their credit limits drastically reduced on their amex cards.  Then my friend Noelle informed me that amex had cut the credit of 50 percent of their customers.

Now I understand where amex is coming from.  They want to limit their credit risk during this economic crunch.  It wasn't personal, it was business.  But do they really want to piss off the people who actually pay their bills?  Or did I piss them off too many times by not allowing them to incur interest on my revolving line of credit?

Anyway, it's done.  We're divorced, American Express and I.  It was clean and simple, but definitely with some hard feelings on my part.  I guess Karl Malden was not as credible as I thought.

Don't Miss Your Flight

My husband and I bought airline tickets to California months ago to attend the 50th wedding anniversary party of my beloved older cousin and his wife.  They were like parents to me through college, with my having chosen to go to college 3,000 miles away from home.  They essentially adopted me.  For years, I spent nearly every weekend with them waterskiing, shopping, going to the theatre, doing chores around the house, and watching soaps -- whatever there was to be done.  I simply loved them and loved spending time with them.  

Ten years ago, I moved to the East Coast, and I haven't seen them since.  So when my husband and I received an invitation to the party, we immediately purchased tickets.  The timing was perfect, actually, as I had just received a special "companion ticket" on Delta.  All we had to do is pay one full fare, and the second ticket was only $99.  

Let me abbreviate the story of all the problems I had booking that ticket.  When I booked it, a Delta agent told me that I would receive an e-mail within 24 hours confirming my purchase.  Day 1, 24 hours:  Delta called me to tell me they hadn't ticketed me because they "didn't have" the voucher number of the companion ticket.  I gave them the number for the second or third time, and the very polite agent told me I would receive a confirmatory e-mail within 24 hours. Day 2, 48 hours:  No confirmatory e-mail.  Day 3, 72 hours:  I called Delta to inquire as to the status of my ticket.  A very nice woman, who I am guessing was somewhere in South Asia, told me my ticket had been cancelled.  She attempted to book me at a price that was $300 more than my original booking.  I asked to speak with her supervisor, as this mix up was Delta's fault.  She kindly informed me that there was no supervisor on duty, and I would have to call back the next day.  Day 4, 96 hours:  No confirmatory e-mail.  I phoned Delta the next morning and was told again that I had no ticket.  This time, the ticket has risen by $400 above my original booking, and my original flights were no longer available.  Again I asked to speak with a supervisor.  After putting me on hold, the agent told me that her supervisor had authorized her to overbook the flight and ticket my husband and me on the original flights at the original price.  Day 5, 120 hours:  I received my confirmatory e-mail.  Even though I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, I only faintly believed that something would still go wrong with the flight.  

My husband and I missed our flight.  Let's chalk it up to New York City traffic.  It wasn't the first (and I'm certain it will not be the last) flight I missed sitting in the back of a cab in hopeless gridlock.  This time, I was actually in the passenger's seat of our Volvo, but the circumstances were fundamentally the same.

I called Delta from the car, and they advised me to try to stand by on the next flight.  That sounded reasonable and very much like the routine drill when one misses a flight.  I was slightly nervous about it, but it was Friday afternoon, and we were not expected at the party in California for 24 hours.  Nevertheless, my nervousness was amplified a bit because my relatives had asked me to perform a recommitment ceremony in front of all the guests.  I was thrilled, delighted, honored at this request.

When we got to the airport, there was an enormous line of people, who like my husband and I, had problems.  The Delta hall was full of frantic, ill-fated passengers bound for Atlanta and Germany and points beyond.  We struck up a conversation with a young man behind us who was on his way to Oregon to a family party.  Like us, he missed his flight on account of traffic.  Delta told him it would cost him $900 to be put on the next flight.  We assured him that Delta was mistaken.

During our two-hour ordeal at the Delta ticket counter, we were confronted with Delta's new policy.  There is no longer "stand by."  In other words, if you miss a flight, you cannot try to grab and empty seat on the next flight free of charge.  You must be rebooked, and a seat must actually exist.  You can't depend on taking the seat of someone who doesn't show up.  You can't even get past security.  If they rebook you for a flight on the same day, it will cost you $50 per ticket, or an extra hundred for my husband and me.  Unfortunately, there were no coach seats.  I pleaded my case.  I sobbed.  I told them about the recommitment ceremony.  At least one agent, Mr. James Hopkins, felt very sorry for us.  He did everything he could for us.  His kindness helped to blunt the sting of the earlier agent we'd worked with, Ophelia, who laughed in our faces when she told us there were eight first class seats available on the next flight, and she could rebook us at a cost of $2200 -- plus $100 rebooking service charge per ticket.

Mr. Hopkins tried to get us on flights out of other airports and to other airports.  He picked up the phone again and again to fight our cause.  In the end, the best Delta could offer us was for us to pay $2000 extra to fly on the first flight the next morning.  But Mr. Hopkins told us to keep hope alive.  He advised us to go home and get on the phone and try to talk Delta into helping us out.  My husband did try.  Like Mr. Hopkins, he was tenacious but fruitless.  

We missed the anniversary party.   We missed seeing beloved family and friends gathered in one place to celebrate a beautiful union and years and years of happiness that I was fortunate to be a part of.  I cried for days.  I cried during the party that I wasn't a part of.  I cried after.  I made desperate calls to my sister and brother to find out what happened.  Any tidbit of information.  Was I missed?  Did they realize I tried my best?

It still hurts, and I think it will for a very long time.

Addicted to Facebook

When Hannes first suggested it, I scoffed. Facebook is for teenagers. What was he doing on Facebook so much? Months went by. He was still glued, locked in a trance. Eventually, he picked up my computer, gave me a username and password, and I was in.

I now have 163 "friends" and believe it or not, all but about three people are actually friends. There is Patrick Ochieng, of course. I know a Patrick Ochieng, but evidently not the one who is my Facebook friend. I met the "real" Patrick Ochieng in Kenya. He runs an NGO in Mombasa. I accidentally befriended Patrick Ochieng of Toronto -- half Kenyan and half Ugandan. I know nothing more about him, but when we discovered the mistake (he discovered it rather, wondering with great interest why a whacko from New York would want to be his Facebook friend) we decided to remain friends. Every Kenyan-Ugandan-Canadian should have a New York whacko, like me.

Truthfully, my 163 Facebook friends are not demanding of my time. And Facebook has helped me reconnect with some incredible people, including my high school photography teacher. But who could have predicted that I would be on Facebook for hours waiting for my friends to make a move in my many ongoing scrabulous games? The addiction escalated quickly. I browbeat others who were staunchly opposed to wasting time on social networking sites into joining Facebook. I started scrabble games with them. I feel kind of sad when I see those friends lurking online, waiting for me (or some new Facebook addict I've introduced them to) to take my next scrabulous move.

I took on new Facebook hobbies. There was Dope Wars and Texas Hold 'Em. Now I had never played poker in my life before Facebook (nor had I been a drug dealer for that matter). Poker was too complicated. But there I was in the midst of an adreneline rush, sitting at a poker table with a bunch of strangers and trying my best not to lose the free 500 chips I'd gotten for the day. I still have no idea how to play poker, despite I find myself in the virtual Bellagio Hotel or Mirage at least once per day. Somehow I actually won today, which is I attribute entirely to random luck.

I'm not sure what the lesson is here. Talk to my husband more rather than pestering him to take his next scrabulous move from the next room? Perhaps I should invent my own social networking site so that at least I can become a billionaire with an addiction.

A Few Word About Sean Bell

The Q train took what felt like forever to arrive this afternoon. Surprisingly, I was able to find a seat. Along with the saxophonist who thinks he’s an alien, I rode home with a man whose voice was too loud. I may be wrong, but I believe people who speak too loudly are self-important and they function under the mistaken belief that everyone within earshot should have the benefit of their wisdom. Occasionally, one comes across a saxophonist alien, and on that rare occasion one may want to listen. But this particular day, the alien was drowned out.

“The last celebrity sighting I had was last week. It was Al Sharpton.” Now I wouldn’t consider Al Sharpton much of a celebrity sighting in New York City, so I was intrigued. “I don’t know what was going on, but there were television cameras set up everywhere.”

The man’s traveling companion spoke, though at a polite volume. “He made a lot of appearances after the Sean Bell verdict. Maybe that was it.”

“I don’t like to comment when I haven’t seen the whole legal proceeding, but it couldn’t have been racist if he was shot by a black cop. And anyway, when you’re dead you’re dead, whether there are 40 bullets or one bullet."

The silence hung in the air. I watched the young black woman who was pretending to be asleep dart glances at him. There was a black or Latino man who was also pretending to sleep. He seemed to smile coyly with his eyes open only enough to watch. I stared ahead while I visibly shook my head in dismissal. I thought about confronting the man but I was too tired to start an argument with a complete stranger. And somehow a confrontation would break the subway code of minding your own business.

“I respect the police. They’ve never done anything to me. I mean, I know I am a privileged white man and everything . . .”

The first words of confrontation almost escaped my mouth. But at that moment he stopped talking. The train lumbered in to Prince Street station, he gave his friend a light kiss on the cheek, she got off the train, and the torture ended.

In the Name of the Father

So I had a commenter ask whether I'm from Ellwood City, Pennsylvania and whether I grew up in the gold paneled house on Lawrence Avenue.  Indeed, I am, and I did!  

Mr. Commenter,  (I do have my reasons to suspect he's a man, though he didn't disclose his identity) thank you for your kind words about my family, my father, and my brother Larry who still lives in our family homestead.

My father died almost 14 years ago, and I still miss him.  As each day passes, I find new common threads between his life and his values and my own.  Too bad I wasn't more aware when he was alive, but I think this is not uncommon.  We too often take our loved ones for granted and forget to celebrate them during life.  My father was a wonderful man, and I constantly seek ways to leave a legacy of his life -- forget my own.

Allow me to tell an abbreviated story that shapes my life.  

My father's family moved to Ellwood City from North Carolina in 1909.  His mother was pregnant with him.  He was the first black person born in Ellwood City and the first black person to graduate from my alma mater, Lincoln High School.  (Go Wolverines!)  My father's history and the depth of our roots in Ellwood City have always made me proud.  And during my lifetime we have always been treated with the utmost respect -- almost as minor local celebrities.

Here's the story:

I never met my Uncle Lin.  Before I was born, his wife murdered him.  She slashed him in an artery in his thigh.  Though he was rushed to the hospital very much alive, he bled to death. The hospital contacted all of the black families in town, and asked them to donate blood.  The hospital refused to give "white blood" to a black patient.  In those days, in the early 60's, there were probably only five black households in town.  Because of the dearth of "black blood" in town, Uncle Lin died.  

I don't think my father ever recovered from that loss.  He became a very sad man before I was born.  

Uncle Lin's murderous wife would walk past our house daily, and I wasn't permitted to speak to her.  My parents didn't tell me why.  I suppose they felt I was too young to know the horrible truth.  One day, against my parents will, I found the courage to speak to her.  "Hello."  I spoke tentatively.  She looked straight ahead and continued her silent stroll past my house.  I never tried again.

When my mother felt I was old enough, she told me the story.  "But why isn't she in jail?" I asked her.  It was then that my mother told me the perhaps the saddest part of the story.   The town refused to arrest her and prosecute a black-on-black crime.

When I tell people this story, they're shocked.  They can't believe that in a town in the North such a thing would happen.  Black blood, white blood, black-on-black crime, no prosecution. It's outrageous but true.

 

I write about this story as a stone in the masonry I'm building to honor my father's life. This story must be told, and now I'm telling it.  I know I will tell it again and again.

Epilogue:  

My cousin is now the chief of police in  Ellwood City.  He wasn't born there, and he didn't grow up there.  His great-grandmother was my father's sister.  He was born and raised in nearby Pittsburgh, where my Aunt Dorothy eventually settled.  

I don't know my cousin very well, but I know that my father would be very proud that a member of our family is the town's first black chief of police.  This, too, has been added to the masonry.  

Elections in Kenya

This fall, I had the pleasure of participating in an exchange with environmental lawyers from Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. The program took me to Kenya where I traveled the country meeting villagers facing environmental and land use . . . well, let's face it, catastrophes. And I'm not exaggerating. But the details of that are for another blog post. I made a number of wonderful friends and contacts in Kenya. I met an array of people excited and hopeful about the future of the country and what at the time was an upcoming election. Not only did I speak with lawyers and activists, I spoke with drivers and shop keepers and newstand workers, and they all shared the same glow of hope for a new democratic future.

Below is an e-mail I received yesterday from one of those people. It is his personal account of what happened during the recent election and the conditions of political and social uncertainty that exist there at this moment. I have omitted his name, not knowing whether he might get into trouble for being so candid in his account. At the end of his e-mail, he lists four things people outside of Kenya can do to help.

_____________________________________________

Dear Friends,

We are still in a state of shock at the manner in which incumbent president Kibaki and his culpable electoral commission, full of his hatchet men has stolen the elections in which Raila had clear lead in a move that takes us back two decades in our democratisation process. we voted overwhelmingly for the ODM in an election that had one of the best turn outs in our history, then in full glare of TV cameras the electoral body bagan fiddling with results that came through from constituencies first by announcing parliamentary results without the corresponding presidential results in places that were the president's strongholds. the intention was to then be able to inflate figures in favour of the president once the other results were in. so from a clear lead of over 1 million votes the president suddenly narrowed the gap to 200,000 in under 2 hours from a paltry five or so constituencies. there were protests that the poll body tried to ignore till the tally centre became unruly. tallying was suspended and a committee of representatives appointed to audit the documents and match them to results announced at polling centres. this group sat whole night and found anomalies in 48 constituencies in which the presidential votes were topped up some to the tune of 50,000 votes. some had 115% voter turn out and lots oof similar nonsense.

the commission was urged to make the report public and allow for a retallying demands which they blatantly rejected. after several hours of waiting the chair emerged only to continue announcing the disputed results. hell broke loose and protests ensued following which the state sent into the tallying centre the military to evacuate everybody. the media was sent out except the state broadcaster who were sent to a private room where the chairman of the commission announced resuts in favour of Kibaki.

the opposition addressed a press conference in which an official of the commission whose consience could not allow to participate in the fraud spoke to the media about what was happening with tallies. as soon as the results were announced a hastily convened swearing in ceremony was televised again by the state broadcaster where the incumbent was sworn in on the same sunday night without even the pomp of the national anthem and in the absence of diplomatic community. this is the shame that we saw between december 27 and 30. ten minutes did not elapse after the announcement as the entire country broke into chaos following the anger and anguish, neighbour turned against neighbour and the post election violence has been unprecedented.

the brinkmanship from the state and its handlers has been characteristic, telling anyone who is aggriveed to go to court and saying they won elections and don't care. the flare up wouldnt be so bad if the state did not unleash its security agents to maim and shoot citizens. the death toll is huge and signs of an end to this is far..

we are pitching for international mediation and the possibility of a transitional arrangement for 3 months to allow afresh presidential election. retallying is useless because the commission chairman by his own admission says the electoral documents are being tampered with by state agents to force the fraud. the court direction is useless as well as the chief justice is a kinsman of the president and led the swearing in of a fraudulent process. you can do many things to assist us in this mess

1. the humanitarian crisis is deep, sharp and acute, food, clothes, blankets and medicine across the country

2. getting voices such as ours in the international media to give the international community the right perspective of this crisis far from doctored state reports

3. protests to kenyan embassies there and pressure on the international community not to recognize this illegitimate government

4. join in campaigns launched so far, petitions and so on which i will forward to you asap to press this illegitimate government to step down.

hope this gives you a sense of what is going on.

Is Hip Hop Going the Way of Jazz?

So back to Europe with this week's entry, and I'll try to be brief.

My friend Ajamu has posed the question, "Is hip hop going the way of jazz?"

Several years ago, maybe 10, I was in Paris. My hair was in locks. And as I wandered through the narrow streets near the Pompidou Center, a group of children began to follow me as if I was a celebrity. They thought I was an American hip hopper. Salt 'n Peppa? (or perhaps Salt or Peppa?) They flattered me.

Years later, I was in Moscow dancing in a club called Pravda or something not-so-clever like that. I recall that rather than having beer on tap, they had vodka on tap. And I could go on and on about my vodka experiences in Russia, but that's not the purpose of this entry. Anyhoo, I remember dancing to a bit of House of Pain. Before I knew it, me and my locked hair, once again found ourselves attracting a crowd. This time, it was a group of twenty-something Russian men who gathered around me in a circle, as if worshiping me, and screaming the lyrics to "Jump Around" at the tops of their lungs. JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! Later when I tried to speak to them in English, they knew nary a word.

Last month, while in Hamburg, I was walking through a street fair, by a live stage, when to my great surprise I heard hip hop in German. A few days later, I was walking through a similar street fair in Amsterdam, by a similar live stage when ironically I heard hip hop in Dutch.

It's one thing to visit the suburbs and find white, middle-class suburban kids in listening to hip hop in their Sean John and Fubu. That's one thing. It's another thing altogether to come across avid European fans, who perhaps have never set foot in the birth country of hip hop who do not speak a work of English.

So as I'm discussing this with my friend, he suggests that hip hop is going the way of jazz. Do you remember the 20's and 30's when African Americans became jazz superstars in Europe? Josephine Baker? Or later, my father's cousin, the saxophonist Clyde Barnhardt? (Okay, maybe he wasn't as big as Ms. Baker, but he made his mark). My Aunt Helen's brother-in-law, a beloved member of our extended family, the jazz composer Billy Strayhorn, headlined in Paris in the 50's and 60's. At the time, he was known more widely in France than in the U.S. where he lived in Duke Ellington's shadow as his principle songwriter. Baker, Strayhorn, and Barnhardt received the celebration in Europe that alluded them in the U.S. during their lifetimes.

And speaking of hip hop.

On that stage in Amsterdam there was also a young brother who rapped in English. He seemed as though maybe he was from the suburbs rather than Bed-Stuy or South Central. He seemed more Tiger Woods to me than 50 Cent. But he was a star at that particular moment on a late summer afternoon in Holland.

To all those aspiring rappers who for one reason or another may not splash here where the competition is quite fierce, Amsterdam is a damn nice city.