Volume
No. 2
NOVEMBER 2003
3.10:
FIELDS OF SCREAMS
Some subscribers might
have already seen this piece, which recounts a trip to SE Asia in 2002.
Angkor What?!
After 27 years of being a tour escort and guide I turned the tables on myself,
but with a twist, when I decided to see Cambodia in the company of a score
of Cantonese-speaking Hong Kongers and a Cantonese-speaking guide. Except
for bi-lingual Nancy, I made the trip in my little Anglophone world surrounded
by the “static” of Cantonese and Khmer.
This left my information on Cambodia to the few books that I had read or had
brought along, but I discovered that it had certain advantages. (Having just
the right book(s) along is something I regard as an indispensable vademecum.
) I could retreat into my guidebooks and histories, or just lapse into a linguistically-induced
aphasia and nobody took any notice or offence (as near as I could tell). If
you’ve ever done group travel you understand this advantage. The others
couldn’t say much negative about me since Nancy speaks and understands
Cantonese. A minor problem was that I towered over and outweighed the rest
of the group by a significant factor and I stopped looking Asian at about
18 months of age. So when I entered museums and architectural sites and restaurants
with “my” group I frequently got questioned in Khmer with something
I took to mean: “Hey, you no lookee Chinee. What, you try to sneakee
in with Chinee group?”
The group consisted of a range of couples, singles, young and old, all, I
would say, of middle and working class backgrounds. There was not a pretentious,
overbearing, pushy, loutish, bitchy person in the group. OK, I’m excluding
myself, but that’s still some sort of a record. Since I couldn’t
communicate much with them (actually there were a few who had some English
and two who were pretty good, but the language denominator was Cantonese and
I left it to them to take the initiative), I had to give them names because
I could not ask them theirs. It’s always to assign people names when
they have some personality.
My favorite was a 72-year-old spry Chinese guy whom I dubbed Don Vito. The
Don’s somewhat high-pitched, strained and hoarse voice would pass as
a perfect impression of Marlon Brando playing the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone—if
Corleone spoke Cantonese. I didn’t understand but a few words that this
Don Vito spoke, but he always sounded like he was ordering his lieutenants
to wipe out the Barzini and Tataglia families, or would that be the Wongs
and the Cheungs. Don Vito did ask Nancy my name and she said to call me “James”.
His reply was: “Ah, like James Bond, 007, license to kill.” I
was right in naming him after a MAFIA don.
Don Vito was “accompanied” by a couple in their late 40s, friends,
not relatives. I named him Sonny, after Santino Corleone, and she Sonny-girl.
A skinny single guy in his early forties with thinning hair and a comic expression
I named Roberto, after his resemblance to Italian actor Roberto Beningni.
This made it easy for me to keep track of them, especially when their real
names were something like Wong Chi-wing, or Kwok Ming-chu, and frequently
written in Chinese characters. I gave most all of them names from movie or
book characters, but had to be careful in referring to them that way, even
if I was being called James Bond.
I did “bond” a little with the group by acting as their photographer.
It remains a curiosity to me what compels Asians to have themselves photographed
in front of things? Standing in front of an historical site, a hotel, a monument,
and facing the camera, is the standard Asian tourist photo. Roberto, who was
a single guy on the tour must have asked me two dozen times to take his photo
in front of a temple, statue, or some other structure. He would set up the
shot and mime to me how he would like it, the dash to the center of the frame
and stand at rigid attention. The friends and family of a young couple in
our group are not going to see a single view of anything in Cambodia that
does not have them standing directly in front of it and with the same placid
expression on their faces, so unvarying that they will think that she was
a spot on the camera lens or a blemish on the film.
But I never learned what my Cantonese traveling companions thought about Cambodia
or the Cambodians.
Cambodians are about ninety percent Buddhists; so they strongly believe in
re-incarnation. This is a good thing, because judging from their late Twentieth
Century history and their present day conditions, their contemporary life
sucks like that of few other countries in the world. The contributions of
Nixon and Kissinger and their B-52s to political violence of the 1970s must
be counted into the legacy of idiocy of the Vietnam War. In the past 30 years
Cambodians have known very little peace, economic growth, or political stability.
Today, much of the population lives at levels of well-being that can best
be described as Neolithic. Kampongs and rural areas lack electricity, running
water, sewerage, and the most rudimentary public services. Most roads are
unpaved, rutted and unlit, and nearly impassable. Housing often consists of
shacks and simple platforms on stilts that are little protection from the
elements or from the breeding grounds for malaria that are to be found in
the ubiquitous fens and other stagnant and fetid pools of water, sewage and
debris. There is a thick and pervasive aroma of human waste and putrefaction
in many areas.
Cambodians may endure these circumstances with considerable grace and good
cheer because their religion promises a better afterlife. But that same religion
may contribute to those very circumstances; feeling that the horrendous misdeeds
of their political leaders will be appropriately settled in the afterlife
they have allowed them to commit the most brutal and corrupt acts in history.
Even in a century that has known the slaughter of Armenians, the Holocaust,
the Rape of Nanking, the partition of India, Hutus slaughtering Tutsi’s
with machetes, Bosnia and Kosovo, and the brutalities in much of Central and
South America, the horrors of the Khmer Rouge may exceed them all. In a few
years they managed to kill between two and three million of their brothers,
sisters, parents and children, often employing methods of torture that would
make Stephan King hug his teddy bear. The leaders they got achieved a level
of brutality that was matched only by their stupidity. By turning schools
into chambers of torture and execution, and emptying the cities of population
and working and starving them to death or forcing them into cannibalism in
the countryside they destroyed the social and economic infrastructure of their
own country.
Cell from the infamous SR-21, a former school used as a torture factory
And it shows. You can even feel it, too, like when we rode out of Phnom Penh
to visit the infamous ‘Killing Fields,’ bouncing for miles on
an unpaved and rutted road that must have been the last passage for hundreds
of thousands. Today, the fields are a memorial. A structure later erected
to commemorate the victims houses only a tower of skulls. Local kids, who
seem to see this place as only an attraction for tourists from who they can
beg, gambol over the sunken mass graves, unaware or unfazed by the grim tree
with a red metal disk affixed to its trunk marking the point where thousands
of babies’ heads were bashed before their bodies were thrown into the
nearby mass grave. Another row of trees that were used for hangings, also
remain. Bones and shards of clothing obtrude from the graves covering an area
of several football fields. I’ve been to Dachau and Auschwitz, places
of genocide; but the killing fields are more accurately a place of suicide,
a nation in a frenzy of self-destruction.
It is a sad irony that many tourists are drawn to Cambodia by this wretched
legacy, adding to the country’s paltry GNP by showing it’s worst
excesses. I suppose that the Coliseum and Place De La Concorde are the same
thing, but there’s not the immediacy of bones and bits of clothing or
the blood spatters that are still visible on the walls of SR21, the school
tuned into a torture chamber.
But people also go to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, perhaps the most magnificent
religious site in the world. This requires a flight from Phnom Penh to Siem
Reap, the nearest large city to an area that contains not only Angkor Wat,
but numerous equally awe-inspiring religious structures spread over a surprisingly
wide geographic area. There isn’t much that can be said about these
temples that doesn’t run one out of superlatives. How a civilization
that produced these architectural, sculptural and spiritual wonders could
have debased to the level of the Khmer Rouge is a real mind scruncher.
I had a suspicion I was going to be taken by the handsome young monk in saffron
robes who was in the door leading into one of the labyrinthine passages that
is Angkor Wat. “Want to see the best view.” he asked in reasonably
good English. I followed and the attached photo is the result, that look of
Buddhist serenity on his youthful features. I had a buck ready when he asked
for a contribution “for the wat”. He pushed for five bucks. I
said ‘no’. I was getting irked and felt like playing a little
Abbot and Costello with him: “What wat?” “The money’s
going to be used for what?” He’d say: “The Wat.” Then
I’d say: “That’s what I asked, WHAT?” But I figured
he wouldn’t get it.
Enterprising Buddhist monk at Angkor Wat
Then he dropped to three bucks as we walked by down a corridor that would
have been good for a multiple monk mugging (these are small monks). I said
‘no’ again, a little pissed now at the spiritual shakedown. We
were at two bucks as we got to the doorway leading out into the open area.
I put my hand on his shoulder in an avuncular way. I didn’t want us
to part acrimoniously. “Look,” I said, “you should be content
with my offering. You wouldn’t want to be re-incarnated as an Enron
accountant, would you?” He seemed to be meditating on that as I made
my leave.
Posted: Wed - December 31, 2003
3.9:
The Flim-Flam Redemption
Lawty, Lawdy, Lordy!
Ya just gotta keep an eye
on those Bush Boys. While the born-again one is taking his ease at Camp David
over the holidays, Bubba Jeb, the fixer of elections, was busy at work on
the brothers' favorite hobby: the eradication of the distinction between church
and state. The current effort, to be slipped in under that scarcely diversionary
Republican Trojan Donkey, "faith-based initiatives," is the Faith-Based
Prison.
Florida's Lawty Correctional Institution will become the nation's first such
facility, although soul-snatchers have long found prisons ideal hunting grounds,
abundant with guilt-ridden souls ready to learn a few psalms to spring on
the Parole Board. It will putatively "voluntary," but those not
anxious to accept Jesus as their "personal savior" will be allowed
to transfer to another institution. Presumably, this will purify Lawty of
Jews, Muslims, and other infidels, since every mention of religion in the
article is referenced to "Christian."
Just what our already screwed-up prisons need: an internal Tali-con to put
the fear of God into their un-saved fellow inmates. "Touch thy toes and
receive the Lawd!" Never mind those expensive drug re-hab and education
programs, some prayer and gospel-spouting and all those nasty recidivists
will be more concerned about making it through the Pearly Gates rather than
hearing again the slamming of prison gates.
Of course, being the Bush Brothers, they will still be sending a good number
of cons to meet their Maker ahead of schedule. And execution by crucifixion
would be cheaper and more "Christian" than lethal injection. After
all, to forgive is divine, and the Bush Boys are only mere "compassionate
conservatives." Praise the Lawd!
Posted: Thu - December 25, 2003
3.8:
'Twas the Night Before . . .
Nothing quite triggers
memory like aromas. Christmas memories are replete with them: pine wreaths,
bayberry candles, a roasting Christmas turkey or goose, incense at midnight
mass (or kids throwing up at midnight mass). These are usually imprinted on
us early in life, as was the case of my most powerful mnemonic aroma: snow
melting on wool clothing. It's just as evocative of Christmas today as it
was, I remember, the first time, in
. . . Christmas 1944
Like many four-year-olds in 1944 I went to my bed on Christmas Eve with great
anticipation, still innocently credulous that there was indeed a Santa Claus
who knew precisely what chintzy wartime toys we had wished for. My parents,
grandparents, and other members of our extended Italian-American household
of around fifteen members were assembled downstairs with their own anticipations.
I don't remember "visions of sugar plums" dancing in my head, but
I had then, and have had since, with some substitutions, my own kaleidoscope
of seasonal sensations: pungent pine resin and scents of candles and log fires,
the aura of colored lights refracted through crystallized windows, snippets
of dialogue fromA Miracle on 34th Street, and square, Georgian notes floating
in the incense-thickened air of midnight mass.
In such sensory overload I dropped into slumber to allow the jolly old fellow
to arrive and do his thing. With a premonitory inkling that my curiosity might
prematurely explode the myth I had suspended any desire to witness his visit.
But something happened that particular Christmas Eve that retains a mnemonic
indelibility over forty-some years since. Sometime in that night my grandmother
gently shook me awake. "Somebody wants to say 'hello' to you," I
heard her say in the haze of half-slumber. The room was dark, and for a moment
I considered that I might be some special, chosen child who would actually
get to meet St. Nick.
But the figure silhouetted in the doorway was neither bearded nor pot-bellied,
but shaven and muscular. As he approached my bed I could feel the cold still
clinging to his clothes. Still in half-shadow I could detect that his coat
wasn't red, but an olive drab Eisenhower jacket decorated with an 8th Army
insignia, sergeant's stripes, and campaign ribbons from North Africa and the
European theater.
My Christmas Eve visitor hadn't come from the North Pole, but from the far
away invasion beaches of Southern Italy, where most of his outfit had been
wiped out in some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II.
"Your uncle Marco is home on furlough from the war," my grandmother
said, holding the arm of her son and the best Christmas present she would
ever get. My uncle leaned down to give me a hug say he would see me in the
morning. I returned to sleep not sure that it had all happened. But to this
day I cannot smell the distinct aroma of melted snow on wool without a flood
of memories of my uncle Marco.
The following morning my uncle joined us kids in playing with our toys. One
of those toys, a cheap little tin model car broke open, exposing that it was
made from a Budweiser beer can, and stamped "made in Japan." I don't
think I was old enough to appreciate the irony in my uncle's smile; but I
seem to recollect that by the following Christmas I no longer believed there
was a Santa Claus.
____________________________________________________________________
© 1990, James A. Clapp Radio Essay No. 56, Aired, KPBS-FM, Dec 23, 1990
Posted: Sat - December 20, 2003
3.7:
Climate and Politics
It's that time of the year
again. Yes, Christmas,Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and all that. But also
Bowl Games. Bowl games, particularly the Rose Bowl, instantly evoke a reverie
of lying on the floor of my parents' living room back in Rochester, New York
in the 1950s, the furnace blazing and frosting the windows as a blizzard raged
outside. My brother and I would be amazed that the people in the stands at
the Rose Bowl were in shirt sleeves and shorts, with sunglasses on their tanned
faces. I had little notion then that one day I would be living where people
put Christmas lights on palm trees and Santa Clauses keeled over from heat
prostration. But even such salubrious climes have not erased a seasonal nostalgia
for those frosted windows, and I become a bit of the East Coast chauvinist
when Southern California newscasters get a bit too boastful about meteorological
conditions. I took some pleasure in a vengeful radio essay I wrote and aired
in 1987.
Sunglasses, Montevideo, Uruguay, © 1998. J.A. Clapp
Environmental Chauvinism
Immigrants to San Diego — that is, "naturalized" as opposed
to "native" San Diegans — have often seemed to me polarized
around extremes of attitudes towards their new city: either falling hopelessly
in love with their new found earthly nirvana, or adopting the cynical attitude
of lovers who have lost. There are, of course, hues and shades in between;
but the latter cohort, among which I spent a protracted period of time in
my early years here, is often driven to their cynicism by such vexing blandishments
as “Don'tcha just love it here,” or “how could you ever
go back East” (the emphasis upon "back" carrying a connotation
equivalent to a devolution into primeval slime).
The most strident chanters of these chauvinistic mantras appear to be recent
immigrants themselves, who apparently feel that they must daily testify a
loyalty oath to San Diego out of fear that they might be forcefully repatriated
to Newark or Buffalo. As might be expected, this chauvinistic fervor ebbs
and flows with the seasons; however, it appears that only "native"
San Diegans are capable of determining the subtle climatic changes that represent
"seasons" in San Diego. How, then, do we immigrants determine the
change of seasons in San Diego? Primarily through newsreel footage of hapless
Midwesterners and Eastcoasters struggling through their annual floods and
blizzards.
And this brings me to the motivation for my theme: that perennial weather
spot on the local evening TV news that gloats over the misadventures of unfortunate
non-San Diegans with the rain, sleet, and snow of their less-blessed environments.
Typically, the banter among the newspersons of any local station goes as follows:
WEATHERMAN: Old Man Winter has arrived early this year in the Great Lakes
region, dumping 15 inches of snow in 8 hours in sub-zero temperatures. [Footage
of blizzard in Erie, Pa.; people shoveling snow, cars in multiple accidents,
little old lady falling on icy sidewalk. Weatherman, almost chuckling, continues:]
Power has been out in 3000 homes, a home for the aged has been evacuated,
and local authorities believe that schools might be closed for weeks, as the
weather is expected to worsen, with no end in sight.
ANCHORMAN: No end in sight is right. Those people can't even see two feet
in front of their faces in that blizzard. [Followed by his broadcasting school
chuckle.]
WEATHERMAN: Well, here's how some of us San Diegans spent the day. [Footage
of people sunning themselves on beaches, people playing golf, sailing and
jogging.]
ANCHORWOMAN: I say a prayer every day that I'm in San Diego. To think that
just a few years ago I was struggling to chip my car out of a block of ice
in Cleveland. Brrrrr . . . ! [She exclaims, shaking her sprayed broadcaster-bouffant
hairdo.]
WEATHERMAN [smirking]: Let's be careful now, or we're going to have all those
frozen people coming to “America’s Finest City” to thaw
out and spoil our little paradise in the sun. Speaking of which, paradise
is expected to continue for the next several weeks, with temperatures in the
mid-80s, cloudless skies, and . . . well . . . you know . . . [end of weather
report]
There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with boasting about the weather.
But since the saying goes that one can't do anything about the weather; a
corollary might be that one can’t take any credit for how good the weather
is, or blame for how bad it might be. Adopting a somewhat superior attitude
about the weather in your city seems therefore a rather hollow boast, and
may even disguise an underlying sense of inferiority.
Now I think there may be an underlying reason for the news turning to "don't
we have the world's best weather format": that is, the local news hasn't
been anything to rave about when we turn to the social and political climate
of San Diego. With a mayor and a councilman recently convicted of illegal
campaign practices and use of city funds respectively, the police chief admitting
using his influence to fix tickets for friends and family, several major banking
and financial and banking figures convicted or indicted for fraud, and with
rising rates in several crime categories, the weather seems about the only
thing left of San Diego's heretofore charmed life.
Still, when your aunt Hortense calls from frosty Buffalo after seeing the
latest San Diego public or financial official trotted out on the national
news for this or that malfeasance at least you can say: "Yea, but did
you see the tan on that guy!"*
_______________________________________________________________________________________
* While the political malfeasances of 1987 are long gone, they have been replenished
by the current local scandal of three Councilmen who are under Federal indictment
for taking “contributions” for a local strip club owner in return
for attempting to change the legal proscriptions against “lap dancing.”
© 1987, James A. Clapp, Ph.D. Aired KPBS-FM, Public Radio, January 12,
1987
Posted: Wed - December 17, 2003
3.6:
Eating His Kurds and Whey
It's always nice, and somewhat
reassuring, to see a brutal bastard get hauled out into the light as the Brutal
Bastard du Jour, Saddam Hussein, was finally apprehended. Hopefully, he will
get the justice he deserves, but, in this opinion, he cannot live long enough
in solitary confinement, or be executed enough times to atone for what he
has done to his people. But I should emphasize hispeople, and the Kurds and
Kuwaitis, but not, until George Bush decided to put our troops into Iraq,
to our people. This needs to be said because, as yet, over 60% of American
people yet believe (and the Bush administration has done little to disabuse
them of it) that Iraqis flew those planes into the WTC and Pentagon on 9-11.
It also needs to be emphasized that Saddam was an ally of the USA who benefitted
from our political and technical support while it was well known what a brutal
bastard he was. In this respect he is not that different from brutal bastards
like Noriega, Stroessner, and several others who's brutalities also did not
evoke US outrage until they became liabilities, or other brutal regimes around
the world that got little more than occasional verbal condemnation. Indeed,
Pol Pot, a brutal bastard much of our own making by our incursion into Cambodia
in the late 60s, makes Saddam look like an amateur in human rights atrocities
game. The reports of Amnesty International, which the US has virtually ignored
for years are dripping with the blood of their misdeeds.
So it is a tempered joy that should be felt over the flushing of Saddam from
his "spider hole." It will boost the administration's shifting justification
for this war. And it will also place those who have opposed this war in the
awkward position of not gainsaying his being brought to justice while affirming
that he was never the threat to American security that was trumped up to justify
this preemptive war. Maybe to save his sorry ass Saddam can be persuaded to
say he was about to attack the US with his weapons of mass destruction, or
that he played pinocle and planned 9-11 with bin Laden. He is cowardly enough
to sue for his life, which he did not have the guts to endanger for all his
previous soldier posturing (or to fall on his sword), at any cost.
We may have squashed a nasty spider, and two cheers for that as it was paid
for with housands of Iraqi lives and hundreds of American lives. But he probably
wasn't the one that bit us, just ugly, and handy. And that, for the Little
Miss Muffets who brought us to this muddle, will likely prove to be an evanescent
comfort.
Posted: Sun - December 14, 2003
3.5:
Berber Feast
Today, a little something from the Travel Archives from 1988 (Yes! That is
me and my hair in that photo):
And Now for a Little Dirty-Dancing in the Desert
One of the ladies who was on my tour still has the negative of the incriminating
photograph. It’s shows me, looking a bit wide-eyed, my arm extended
around the back of a Moroccan Berber woman in full folk dress. It doesn’t
take much squinting to discern that the hand at the end of that arm is cupping
her breast.
My hand was on that breast for only a second—I swear it!—and it
might, I confess, have, in some primal reflex in that instant, sought to determine
its form and firmness, but what really needs to be understood is that my hand
was there because my Berber dancing partner PLACED IT THERE!
She did it surreptitiously, but in front of the entire tour group and, as
my misfortune would have it, at the precise instant that lady’s camera
shutter was open. So there it is, undoctored photographic evidence of cross-cultural
sexual harassment. The perfect photo to go next to the headline: American
Professor Molests Berber Maiden, Sentenced to Twelve Years in Moroccan Prison.
Moments before the Professor's outrage
A career-destroying conviction like that would give me plenty of time to regret
letting myself be talked into going along on the Berber Feast excursion. Having
wandered the souks that day and evening before enjoying the the fire-lighted
activities of the story tellers, snake charmers and water sellers of Marrakech’s
huge, exotic Jma El Fna square, an evening of tourist-oriented food and group
entertainment seemed rather tame and tedious. My instinct is to avoid travel
activities of this sort, which frequently fall within the definition of “tourist
trap.” In this case I had no idea it might be a trap from which I might
never extricate myself.
Once arrived at the “feast” our group, like several others, was
herded into tents at a facility that, in the evening’s waning light,
seemed to be constructed from the leftover sets from Casablanca. Sentries
in billowy Berber horseman costumes and turbans guarded the entrances, presumably
against any invading tourist hordes bent on crashing the gate without paying.
Berber women in folk costume and jangling coin jewelry escorted us to floor
cushions set around low tables in the tents and, as if on cue, we were brought
a dinner of greasy roasted lamb, couscous, and other local delicacies.
It was after consuming my annual allotment of fat and cholesterol that the
entertainment began, first with dances performed by young women and a little
boy who danced and spun a tassel on his fez with more agility than a professional
stripper. This was entertaining, as the young dancing girls twirled and gyrated
erotically, and the boy spun and tumbled for the cameras. Then came the part
of the evening’s entertainment where the local talent was to be supplemented
by men dragged from the audience to join the young Berber women.
Very often these sorts of diversions are designed to help the foreigner look
like a jerk. Having aversions to both dancing and looking like a jerk I resisted
the tugging and cajoling of several young ladies as long as I could. I managed
to avoid one dance that resulted in some of the Berber maidens actually riding
on the backs of some of the male tourists. This seemed to delight some of
their wives and consorts, although a few looked aghast at movements that were
unambiguously sexually suggestive. When a dance that was a bit like a minuet
started I though it might be my chance to get the obligation to be a compliant
guest settled with a minimum loss of dignity.
It was during this dance that my partner, an young woman who strongly resembled
my then girlfriend’s sister, seized my hand from her waist and maneuvered
it under cover of some dance movements to her breast. Perhaps it remained
there a moment longer than I have already admitted to, but it was quickly
removed when she smiled at me and made the little signal of rubbing her fingers
with her thumb—unmistakable Berber sign-language for “how about
coughing up a few dirham for the ‘feelie,’ dearie.” I wasn’t,
of course, to give her any money right then and there, with cameras clicking
and all, but when a basket was being passed for tips she gave me a little
pinch on the arm as a reminder to contribute a little extra for the impromptu
mammary exam.
After the dinner and dancing we removed to the area outside the tents, which
consisted of a grassless area the size of several football fields. After tourists
were bothered to take brief rides on lethargic camels we were treated to a
demonstration of the impressive Berber cavalry charge. A couple dozen riders
charge abreast in a single line from the far end of the field, galloping at
top speed toward the spectators at the other end. At the last moment the rein-in
their chargers and fire their rifles in unison into the air. It’s impressive,
and as much a thinly veiled exhibition of potential Berber male violence as
the dancing was of Berber female sensuousness.
This demonstration is repeated several times, so I took the opportunity to
charge off to the men’s room, located behind the tents. When I emerged
I was greeted by none other than my dancing partner, who, with a few other
unmistakable gestures, communicated to me that while the others were buying
trinkets and watching the horsemen, I could have—for another contribution
of dirham of course—a little private and pleasurable entertainment behind
the tents.
Oh, sure. New headline: American professor caught’ in flagrante delicto’
with Berber maiden(?) Chieftain says marry her, or be trampled to death by
Berber horsemen.
Posted: Thu - December 11, 2003
3.4:
Everything in Its Place
One of the little existential
lessons of retirement is that the instincts one has acquired for the length
of a career don't "retire." I think about cities and urban life
as much as I always did, confirming that my interest in those subjects always
transcended my "job" teaching about them. I'm writing about them
as much or more than I ever did. I still have a tendency when reading a book
or an article to instinctively think how this or that observation or fact
might fit into some course I used to teach, or some lecture I might give one
day.
Also, calls from two journalists last week for phone interviews, reminded
me that not everybody knows (or cares) that I am "retired." But
one of those interviews that resulted in some quotes in print today in the
San Diego Union Tribune identifies me as a "retired urbanologist"
(I always preferred "urbanist"). Actually, I enjoyed speaking about
my favorite subject again, and I realize that, owing to my transcendent interest
in it, and also the instinct to communicate one's thoughts and observations,
"retired" will probably always have quotation marks around it for
me.
Sunset on a Yangtse town © 2001, J.A. Clapp,
Both interviews were related
to the subject of how cities in general, and San Diego in particular, respond
to tragedy and catastrophe, a subject in which I have had a long interest.
It inspired me to exhume a piece of my own published shortly after the San
Francisco earthquake in October of 1989.
San Francisco: The Persistence of Place
It is an incontestable fact of life that the two fundamental dimensions of
existence are Time and Space. What exists is always somewhere, at some time.
But for each of us these dimensions have particularity. Time and space become
circumstance and place.
This might sound like idle philosophizing; but nothing brings it down to reality
like an earthquake, or any like catastrophe. Most of the time, where we are,
and when, seems of no great moment, and we go about with little wonder that
this or that time or place might change our lives, or end them; but we have
probably all found ourselves at one time or another "in the wrong place
at the wrong time."
In the San Francisco Bay Area and environs, during a 15-second period around
5:05 PM on October 17, 1989, circumstance and place intersected with great
consequence in the life of those cities and their inhabitants. Like great,
jagged sweeps on seismograph paper, that date and those 15 seconds became
uniquely etched in the lives of those who experienced them. Others can try
to understand what it was like, perhaps empathize, but they can only share
the experience by analogy or imagination.
Perhaps this observation is close to the obvious. But its implications are
not. It is not obvious to many who are not San Franciscans why anyone would
want to live in a city under constant threat of geological oblivion. San Franciscans
are ever aware of this fact; it goes with the territory. Nevertheless, they
will again stubbornly rebuild on their faulted promontory, however the subterranean
gods of plate tectonics may conspire to shake them off. It may seem irrational;
but it's also very human. Since the time when prehistoric people made burial
places into shrines, places, which are locations of geography and memory,
have been a persistent feature of human existence.
Places connect our pasts, presents and futures; they are spatial-temporal
dimension of our identity and biography. When we consider this, it is less
puzzling why Italians rebuild towns on the lava-ravaged slopes of Vesuvius,
why Johnstowners return to their floodplain, why Beirutis cling to their living
hell. It is why our hometowns remain special in our memories long after we
have left them. We may even connect our aesthetic or spiritual existence with
places in which we have never physically been, like Jerusalem, Rome, or Mecca.
But let a catastrophe level our city, or that epicenter of place, the home,
and we become literally “displaced.” The shock and confusion we
read on the faces of the victims of such catastrophes is certainly engendered
by their material losses and the dangers which they have experienced, but
it also owes to the psychological disorientation of seeing those containers
of memories, their homes and familiar surroundings, askew or in rubble, the
solidity of the city itself made fragile and impermanent. They have become
bereft of the prime orientation of their personal compass. It is their need
to regain their sense of place, mentally as well as materially, that impels
them to rebuild, as much as possible, as it was, where it was. For a time
they may find shelter, but it will not be "home".
Places are, therefore, locations that are permeated with meaning and memory.
Their importance to lives is why
we resist their obliteration by the forces of change, natural or man-made.
They are as sharable as what is evoked by a city's name, or a neighborhood,
and can be as discrete and non-substitutable as home, or where we remember
being when we heard the war ended or Kennedy was shot.
As a place San Francisco can only be San Francisco precisely where it is,
at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula,
astride the San Andreas Fault. Move it anywhere else and it is no more San
Francisco than would be an ersatz facsimile of it at Disneyland. Its location
is inextricable from its history and identity. San Francisco's is where the
fog can
roll through its urban canyons as thick as cream, where Summer and Winter
can change places, where the topography is vertiginous in both form and beauty.
And it is a place indelibly marked by memories as well as anticipations of
when the earth decides to quake, roll and roar in defiance of man's ancient
habit of place-making.
For a brief time, as we sat comfortably in our own places, and vicariously
shared its tragedy, we also admired the powerful bonds of San Franciscans
to each other, as well as to their chosen place. It is not a trait unique
to San Francisco, but in witnessing their courage in the dark hour of their
city it made all of us San Franciscans. For those for whom it is the city,
the place to be, there seemed little doubt that it will remain, whatever the
Richter may ordain, the only place to be.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
© 1989, James A. Clapp, San Diego American Planning Association
Journal, December 1989, pp. 1, 3.Re-printed, APA Northern
Section News, Vol. 8, No. 58, April 1990, pp. 1, 4.
Posted: Sun - December 7, 2003
3.3:
The Steal Industry
Hey, will the real George
W. Bush please stand up!
There are so many versions of this guy—grotesquely fashioned in the
ideological laboratories of the neo-con chickenhawks and the Machiavellian
noodle of Carl Rove—that maybe the crafted image of the swaggering Texan
straight-shooter whose word is his bond will begin to be seen for the charade
that it is even among the voters who have fallen for his cons.
Cranes in celebration, Wellington,
New Zealand, © 1995, J. A. Clapp
There is, of course, the con that he is actually the “elected”
president the country, stolen by election tampering from the Florida attorney
general and the blatant prejudice of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on
the Supreme Court.
Then there’s the larceny of his, and his VP’s, friends at Enron
(who just might walk), not to mention some questionable little stock shenanigans
when George was in the energy business himself. Somehow this is off the political
screen for the moment in that the VP refuses to turn over any records that
would indict him.
Oh well, all that is, if not forgiven, swept nicely under the carpet thanks
to the antics of Mr. bin Laden, the man who really made George Bush “president.”
Somehow, out of the smoke and rubble, and out of a hole somewhere in Nebraska,
this failed businessman, ex-boozer, draft-dodger, born-again Christian, dolt,
became an overnight Mr. Kickass (if, of course, it’s a sure thing).
But there are other versions of George the political chameleon. There’s
the George Bush who had campaigned against the idea of preemptive wars and
nation building who morphed into the wannabe Johnny Appleseed of democracy
in the Middle East.
There’s the George Bush who had all these domestic agendas but has strapped
the country with the largest public debt in our history at a time when states
and local governments are in desperate need for some of their money to come
back to them rather that Iraq, Afghanistan and Halliburton.
There’s the George Bush who campaigned on reducing the size of government
but has an administration that, it is reported, spends $21 more per capita
than the Clinton administration—after handing much of the $296 Billion
surplus he was handed by his predecessor to his rich corporate cronies.
Remember George Bush who said to hell with the UN, and then ended up back
there looking for some imprimatur for his preemptive war that would get him
a real coalition.
And the George Bush who campaigned as a “free trader” but was
quite willing to pander for votes in Pennsylvania and West Virginia by installing
a tariff on foreign steel. But when the WTO and those obstreperous countries
of “Old Europe” threatened retaliation that might even affect
more voters in other states, Mr. Kickass caved again and rolled over on the
steelworkers.
The Democrats may have a slate of candidates with nine different personas,
but at least their nine different personas are not in one candidate.
Stand up George, and be counted. Then sit down, George, preferably on your
ranch, and let somebody with some integrity sit in the Oval Office.
Posted: Sat - December 6, 2003
3.2:
Take My City . . . Please!
Years ago, when I was researching
my book on quotational thought on cities and urban life, I found some of the
most clever and amusing material came from humorists. I decided to take some
of the best of them and put them together for a radio essay, especially when
a lot of the humorous rivalry that often exists between cities was given currency
by the pennant race for the World Series between San Diego and Chicago. While
the circumstances are dated, the humorous ripostes and barbs have a staying
power. [By the way, this is not a shameless promotion of my book, which was
published in 1984 and has been out of print for almost a decade. Then again,
why didn't you buy a copy when it was in print?]
Rivalrous Cities
Rivalries among cities are commonplace, going back at least to Mycenae and
Troy and doubtless a good deal earlier. Superior attitudes exhibited by Leningraders
over Muscovites, Edinburgers over Glaswegians, and New Yorkers over Angelenos,
among others, are longstanding and still the source of jokes and put downs.
Los Angeles has been a staple for many East Coast comedians, among them Woody
Allen, who, in his film Annie Hall jibes: "I don't want to live in a
city where the only cultural advantage is you can make a right turn on a red
light." Generally, such rivalries tend to express themselves in good-natured
quips, as Charles Finger related of the sibling rivalry between two Midwestern
sister cities: "One Sunday evening a Minneapolis minister started his
sermon by saying, 'I take my text this evening from St. Paul'; whereupon his
congregation rose en masse and filed out of the church refusing to listen
to any such doctrine."
However, when the major league baseball teams of Chicago and San Diego confronted
one another in a series of games to determine ascendancy to the World Series,
the humorous insult contest between the cities, though not reaching the level
of invective, did focus upon stereotypical class characteristics. San Diego,
which is often characterized in the "laid-back" and narcissistic
terms generally ascribed to Southern California, was portrayed by Chicago
columnist Mike Royko as a "bunch of wimps" and "quiche-eaters"
who absent themselves from work when the "surf's up." He went on
to exclaim that: "Even their ballpark is disgusting. It's new and modern
and clean. And the fans wouldn't even think of getting into brawls or cursing
an opponent or tossing beer on an outfielder. Instead, they come to the park
in the skimpiest clothing and admire each other's Nautilus-tuned bods. Anybody
with a manly, bleacher bum belly is viewed as an affront to the environment."
Such a characterization is perhaps to be expected from a Chicago journalist
whose town is typically portrayed in brawny, masculine terms by writers like
Carl Sandburg, or Studs Terkel, who describes. . . "Chicago with its
lack of sophistication and its muscularity [as] comical, archaic in this cool
era, somewhat like an old punch-drunk fighter, swinging wild roundhouse wallops
to the laughter of the weisenheimers at ringside." An editorial in the
San Diego Evening Tribune went right at that image: "Chicago is has-been
slum of sausage-eaters on the toxic waste Riviera of America. It's got a grand
past in the corruption department." Of the two cities, Chicago, perhaps
owing to its more volatile past, tends to be more self-deprecating; even Sandburg,
who penned a renowned poem about the city, was moved to joke: "Here is
the difference between Dante, Milton and me. They wrote about hell without
ever seeing the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for
years and years."
But some cities, faring so poorly in the rivalrous give-and-take, can ill-afford
to poke much fun at themselves. "Oakland is this kind of town . . ."
wrote sports columnist Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, "You have
to pay 50 cents to go from Oakland to San Francisco. Coming to Oakland from
San Francisco is free. And when you know that, it tells you all you have to
know about Oakland. It has one of the longest losing streaks in the annals
of American cities. It's 0 for this century in municipal batting average."
Oakland has the misfortune of juxtaposition to San Francisco, perennially
voted in polls as "America's favorite city." Ironically, Oakland's
position as the butt of put-downs may have been originated by one of its most
famous daughters, Gertrude Stein. It was Oakland's ill-luck to be implicitly
compared to another of the world's favorite cities, which Stein adopted as
her home after leaving her native city. She much preferred Paris because "the
trouble with Oakland" as she saw it, was that: ". . .there is no
there there." The satirical barb invited a parody by San Francisco newspaper
columnist Herb Caen: "The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there,
it's there!" Oaklanders have been vexed by these put-downs for years,
finally prompting a defensive retort from among the city's prouder residents
that "there is a here, here."
In the final analysis it is a city's personality or image—a laid-back
San Diego, tough Chicago, or a homely sister Oakland—that attracts and
inspires the humorist. Most cities do not appear to mind the attention as
long as, as the saying goes, "they spell its name right." For the
thinned-skinned city there is little chance for escape but to attempt to change
its image. But even of that, warns columnist Art Seidenbaum: "A city
worrying about image enhancement is like a man considering a wig; each faces
the world with a shinning inferiority complex."
_____________________________________________________________________
Essay No. 6, © 1987James A. Clapp. Aired KPBS-FM, Public Radio, February
5, 1987
Posted: Fri - December 5, 2003
3.1:
Mr. Photo-Op
Having blown it with the
"Mission Accomplished" carrier landing in the dangerous waters a
few miles off the California Coast, and in need of a less embarrassing visual
for the 2004 campaign, George has been busy spending our tax money gadding
about for Photo-Ops. He spent a fortune on his security for a chance to do
his patented "I've got a painful rash in my armpits" walk between
QE II and His Royal Gonads, Prince Philip. And now, ladies and gentlemen,
the courageous Thanksgiving Day dash into Baghdad to lift the spirits of the
troops, accomplished after an elaborate deception of sending planes in different
directions and a veil of secrecy to ensure that (and we must have some gratitude
for it) Dick Cheney does not become, in title as well as by influence, the
Prez.
Billed and publicized as
a "morale builder" for the troops one has to wonder what those who
he has unnecessarily put in harm's way think about the guy whose daddy got
him shoved to the top of the Reserve list to avoid any contact with Viet Nam,
and who spent practically an entire day in a hole in the ground somewhere
in Nebraska(?) while fire fighters and rescue workers lost their lives on
9-11, was doing giving pep talks to the people who are doing his fighting
and dying for him. The troops weren't expecting turkey on Thanksgiving, but
they sure got one this time.
George was back home in a flash, with plenty of stills and footage for the
campaign, arriving almost surrepticiously as those caskets now practically
smuggled home from Iraq that he no longer allows the press to photograph.
Sorry no Photo-Ops for casulaties.
Posted: Tue - December 2, 2003