Volume 4
JANUARY 2004
4.12:
Curb that Chien! (City Streets: Part II)
People have long thought
that I was born with this lithe but muscular physique, and the graceful, athletic
moves of a dancer. But, actually, these attributes date only from the time
when I lived in Paris, a city that, as the essay below explains, both creates
and requires a certain lightness of foot in one's movements about its streets.
© 2004, UrbisMediaProductions
A Parisian Terpsichore
As any eight-year-old American girl with aspirations for a part in “The
Nutcracker” or the lead in “Swan Lake” knows: the language
of ballet is French. Russians may be renowned for the performance of the art,
but the French provided the lexicon for its complex motions and postures.
Ballet is alleged to have originated in the Renaissance courts of Italy and
been brought to the court of France by Catherine de Medici, but the certainty
of its origins is unknown. Since many arts are derived from the commonplace
activities of life, like homebuilding, communication, and even war, there
is no reason to believe that ballet was not as well. My own hypothesis is
that ballet was born in the streets of Paris, for the observant person can
observe all the fundamentals of ballet in the grace of Parisian pedestrians.
Despite its furious motor traffic Paris remains a predominantly pedestrian
city, peopled with a rich and varied corps-de-ballet in different costume.
Each day, as the Parisians take to their streets, the overture for their ballet
is chimed by the bells of its twenty mairies, or town halls. From the mairies,
which also contain police stations, emerge the kepi-topped gendarmes who glissétwo-by-two
into the boulevards. Next appear trashmen and workmen in the traditional blue
coveralls, sweeping gutters with their witch brooms and tending public gardens.
Still others scurry about the sidewalks in small, motorized sweepers and sprayers,
clearing the debris of yesterday's performance.
These are soon joined by those whom I call the “baguetteers,”
Parisians swarming to and from the ubiquitous boulangeries and patisseries
with those fresh, thin breadloaves called baguettes. Armed with these two-foot
long staples of the French diet they hurry homeward through the streets like
fusiliers, pirouetting here and there to avoid the lengthy loaves being snapped
by a passing elbow, or another baguette.
Soon the bus and Metro commuters join the corps-de-ballet, but not until the
“poodliers” take to the sidewalks. As if on cue, out of the apartments
appear countless stout and severe-looking women, all pulled at the leash by
toy poodles and other apartment-sized mutts. Some of the women plié
to scoop up and carry their dear little beasts, many wearing knitted poodle-warmers
like miniature saddles, hurrying them to their morning duty.
Now it is these poodles and mutts that give the sidewalks of Paris the unique
balletic choreography that is to follow. For in defiance of every governmental
plea and threat, the sidewalks of Paris are no sooner swept and washed clean,
than these million or so cosseted canines turn them into the most treacherous
litter box in the world. The city has gone so far to stencil little white
dogs on the sidewalks with arrows pointing to the gutter, but one is just
as apt to find the stencil itself used as a poodle-potty, as if to make the
pungent point that nobody instructs a Paris pooch in defecatory protocol.
Most recently the city has added a chorus of motorcyclists fitted with vacuums
and disinfectant sprayers, but their manure-maneuvers are largely in vain.
And so the terpsichory takes a tragicomic turn as workers, shoppers, and schoolchildren
enter this feculent minefield. Now are to be seen a complete balletic repertoire
of positions and movements: the jeté to hurdle a deposit, a graceful
arabesque to avoid another. The experienced Parisienne Pavlova might employ
the rapid stutter steps of a pas-de-Boureé to escape soiling her fashionable
pumps. A Nijinsky in a well-tailored business suit may execute a leaping entrechat
to avoid smelling like a bus station rest room. Soon all are twisting, spinning
and leaping.
But alas, not all are so graceful or successful. The danger is everywhere
and the unfortunates are soon seen sputtering and cursing as they exhibit
the foot-scraping motions of the rond-de-jamb at a curb, furiously trying
to remove the offending substance.
Still, the Barishnykovs and Makarovas of Paris are more practiced than the
hapless American tourist who, consulting a map, or ogling a monument, is the
easiest prey of the poodliers. It used to be said that one could always identify
Americans by the style of their shoes, but in Paris a more certain indicator
is their aroma.
The American tourist is the most awkward of the corps de ballet. After a few
days Les Americaines become convinced that the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame
were put built to distract them from the squishy perils of the footpaths and
to provide the Parisians with a good laugh.
Ah, but it's Paris, the beautiful and enchanting City of Light (on your feet),
and it is a privilege to take part in its daily ballet. One needs only to
practice a few graceful and defensive movements at the barre before stepping
out into the streets, keep a sharp eye and . . . sniff, sniff . . . sniff
. . . Merde! Not again!
______________________________________________________________________________________________
© 1993, James A. Clapp, “A Parisian Terpsichore” San
Diego American Planning Association Journal, May 1993
4.11:
Boosh in Space: But Why? An Invitation
I'm trying something interactive
with this particular entry. The graphic below suggests perhaps the most obvious
reason why Mr. Boosh, whose notion of Lebensrraum now can no longer be satisfied
by grasping chunks of the Middle East under false pretenses, now has a new
found "vision thing" for the solar system. But there may be other
reasons and justifications for Mr. Boosh's new found interest in space exploration.
So I am extending ann INVITATION to my "subscribers" to send in
their own speculations. Just press that FEEDBACK button at the bottom and
fire away. I would like to publish the results in a forthcoming issue (without
attribution should you feel the brimstone breath of Ashcroft on your neck)
to be shared by all. Yes, and this invitation is tendered to any Right Wingers
and Clinton Bashers who may wish to see something heroic in our president
who has gone from cowering in a deep hole in Nebraska on 9-11 to the planetary
neighborhood.
So I look forward to "hearing" from you. Sometimes I feel like those
intrepid SETI listeners for some communication from the heavens. Hellooooo!
Is anybody out there?
© 2004 UrbisMediaProductions
Posted: Sat - January 17, 2004
4.10:
American Genesis
Those practitioners of
oxymoronic (emphasis on the 'moronic') "Creation Science" are at
it again. If the have it their way, when you take your kid, or grandkid, to
the Grand Canyon, and they ask you how old that huge natural wonder is, you
can answer: "Oh, somewhere between 5 and 6 thousand years. It was made
by the great flood as told in the Bible. You know, the one with Noah and all
those animals." So sayeth a book you can purchase in the park book shop
there titled: Grand Canyon: A Different View.
Use of the "holy scriptures" for crackpot "scientific proofs"
of religious beliefs is nothing new, and would be laughable were it not for
the fact that there are a lot of serious jerks out there who want this stuff
either to be "alternate" scientific explanations, or exclusive explanations
of natural phenomena taught in our schools. These are people who were born
without metaphor or allegory glands and would be pitied for being condemned
to lives of terminal literalism were it not for the fact that they are so
freakin' irksome.
Today's issue recounts a story based on an incident a few years ago, but might
well have happened yesterday.
The Gospel According To Tisdale
To the chagrin of religious fundamentalists it was recently reported in the
national press that a group of 200 biblical scholars that has met for the
past six years as the “Jesus Seminar” reported their conclusions.
Approximately eighty-percent of the sayings attributed to Jesus, many of those
commonly quoted by fundamentalists, said the scholars, were probably composed
by the authors of the gospels and other early Christian writers.
Many who have read the Bible—having seen the movie doesn't count—must
wonder just how literally one can take the world's most published and quoted
book. Consider the fact that the Bible has gone through a lot of translation
over the years. First its stories were transmitted through a Hebrew oral tradition,
then written in ancient Hebrew, later translated into Greek, then Latin, then
Old English (with the thees and thous), and finally into a more contemporary
English. Even the people who are quoted in the Bible spoke a variety of languages.
For example, Christ spoke Aramaic, a dialect different from Hebrew. We all
know that a lot can get lost, misinterpreted, and embellished over time and
in translations between languages.
Not long ago I was innocently washing my car when I was pounced upon by one
of those roving evangelicals who wanted to give me a copy of the Bible if
I would give her a chance to save my soul. I didn't have the support of 200
biblical scholars to back me up, but perhaps I anticipated their findings
a bit in conjuring my defense against her intrusive preaching.
I tried to fend off my zealous evangelist's annoying recitations of chapters
and verses by posing several questions about the accuracy of scripture. “Even
the alphabet of ancient Hebrew could have made a great difference,”
I suggested as I soaped down the roof. “What, for example, if the ‘t’
sound in ancient Hebrew was represented by a letter that looked like our letter
‘g’. This would means that God's name isn't really God, but Todd,
and we should be saying 'Todd bless you', ‘For Todd's sake,’ and
‘Oh my Todd’!”
“Blasphemy!” she retorted, and cited a verse that implied that
God (or Todd) would punish me for such an utterance. “Every word in
the Bible is true!” she insisted.
“Come one,” I said, resisting an impulse to let the hose spray
over in her direction. “Do you really believe that Methuselah lived
900 years? Maybe he just felt awful one morning after a night of heavy drinking
and said, 'Boy, I feel 900 years old today', and just like that it gets into
the Bible that he lived three centuries. Just bad reporting.”
“So I take it that you don't believe in miracles either,” she
snapped.
“I'd believe it was a miracle if my car could get through a couple of
days without being used as a toilet for half the bird's in this city,”
I replied, scraping a guano deposit off the hood.
“I mean biblical miracles,” she said.
“You mean like the healing of the lepers?” I suggested.
“Yes, how about that one,” she said.
“That one is a good example of mistranslation,” I replied. "Obviously
you are unfamiliar with Prof. Norman Tisdale's work.”
“Never heard of him,” she scoffed.
“Well, Tisdale, the great scholar of ancient languages, says that ‘leper’
is actually a misinterpretation of the ancient Hebrew for ‘leaper’.
He says that the 'leapers' of Biblical times were actually irksome practical
jokers who hid behind trees and temple columns and leaped out at passersby
to startle the daylights out of them. Since they often waited so long for
their victims to appear that they were neglectful in their personal habits,
they were called, as the Bible says, ‘unclean’.”
“That's ridiculous,” she snapped. “The Bible says that the
‘leapers’, I mean lepers, were healed, so they must have been
ill.”
“Tisdale explains that as well,” I replied. "He says that
the word spelled h-e-a-l should properly be translated as h-e-e-l. According
to him the ‘leaper'’ problem was finally solved in the first century
A.D. when a holy man went about teaching people to bend over quickly at the
waist when they were about to be pounced upon by a ‘leaper’, at
the same time thrusting out one of their legs straight behind them to strike
the leaper in the groin with the back of the foot. This karate-like movement
was referred to as ‘heeling a leaper’. Over time, and because
of mistranslation, it was fashioned into the story of a miracle.”
“I've never heard anything so absurd in my life!” she growled.
“I'm sure you have,” I replied, scrubbing more guano off the bumper.
“I suppose your Prof. Tisdale has his own version of the miracle of
the loaves and fishes.”
“You mean the miracle of the lox and bagels,” I corrected. "Want
to hear about it?
“No thank you, I'd rather take a moment of silence to pray for your
sick mind and your imperiled soul.”
“I'm for that,” I said, wringing out my chamois, “I might
even do a little praying myself.”
She was probably praying that those two gulls circling over my car had diarrhea.
When she finished she looked at her watch and exclaimed: “My Lord! I've
got to go or I'll miss the Padres game,” and disappeared as quickly
as she had arrived.
“Thank Todd,” I murmured, “my prayer has been answered.”
__________________________________________________________________________________
© 1991, James A. Clapp. Originally published in Umbrella Magazine, Issue
No. 33, May 1991
Posted: Sat - January 17, 2004
4.9: What's in a Name?: City Street, Part I
Many cities in America
now have streets named after Martin Luther King, some of them streets on which
he led marches and was hauled off from to local jails. There is now a recently
published book (video review on CNN) about streets bearing the name of the
great civil rights leader. But the process of honoring King with slabs of
American pavement has not always been smooth. In San Diego in 1987 the City
renamed Market Street to Martin Luther King Way. But the businesses along
he commercial street pushed for a referendum that returned it to its original
name that same year. In return King was accorded a segment of freeway 94 that
runes from downtown San Diego to the city of La Mesa. At least he has more
lanes and a higher speed limit.
The following newspaper piece was published in the midst of the street naming
controversy.
. . . Thank God Almighty, a Street at Last
In some respects it appears that the Market Street-Martin Luther King Way
controversy currently working its divisiveness in San Diego politics is much
ado about very little. After all, Market Street will be Market Street whatever
name is placed at its undistinguished intersections. My initial reaction to
the furor perhaps trivialized the debate: why couldn't our politicians, those
practitioners of the “art of compromise” simply nominate, this
shabby byway as “Market Luther King Way,” and, with Solomonic
wisdom, split the difference between the querulous factions.
Whether the controversy will end up as a minor footnote in San Diego history
or fester into something akin to a local Dreyfus affair is yet to be learned.
There may already have been several political lessons in this sorry matter;
but it appears that there are other, perhaps less consequential, lessons as
well.
It would seem that the initial naming of streets is a relatively indisputable
matter. The choice of employing letters or numbers as in “A” Street
or “23rd Street” or the names of plants, animals, states, or even
the names of developers' children or pets, such as Debbie Drive or Rover Road,
is generally cause for little concern. But once named, allegiances to these
arbitrary choices crystallize not only around such matters as known business
and residential addresses, but around more subtle symbolic and psychological
factors as well, and re-naming streets can prove politically complicated.
And when the intent in naming or re-naming a street is to honor or remember
a particular individual other associations and meanings compound the issue.
Then the intrinsic neutrality of a “29th Street” or a “Broadway”
gives way to partisan feelings; a lifelong Republican may bristle at having
to reside or do business on a Kennedy Street, or a Catholic on John Wesley
Boulevard, etc.
The French have a penchant for naming many of their streets for renowned personalities,
a practice with often excessive as well as bewildering results. Within a five-block
stretch in Paris, for example, one street changes from “rue Auguste
Comte,” to “rue de l'Abbe,” to “rue Erasmus,”
to “rue Brossiolette,” to “rue John Calvin”—one
street with historical associations and philosophical allegiances for nearly
everybody. However, trying to find one's way around Paris is like speed-reading
Arnold Toynbee.
At another level, the Market St./King Way dispute might be seen as a failure
in political communication that is mirrored in the failure of social communication
in our streets. The automobile is the sovereign of the American street, which
is designed chiefly for its movement and storage—broad and orthogonal.
Outside of their mobile cocoons Americans are ill-at-ease with their streets,
which have little to offer the pedestrian in the way of interest, variety,
relaxation, or entertainment. Sidewalk cafés are rare, piazzas (or
squares) and small parks even more scarce. Businesses and their signs are
designed to snare the motorist, not the pedestrian, and building facades are
gap-toothed by the parking lots. As either the cause or effect of these characteristics,
Americans are not “street people,” a rather pathetic term reserved
for unfortunates without cars or no better place to be.
If there is an antithesis to the American street it is the to be found in
Italy, where the street is the prime medium of communication. Much narrower,
flanked by mixtures of residential and commercial buildings, changing in elevation
and direction, enlivened by sidewalk cafes, spilling into piazzas, adorned
with fountains, staircases and statuary, streets are the public living rooms
of Italian cities. Although the pedestrian must increasingly share the street
with overabundant Fiats and Vespas, the Italian street remains the central
meeting place for friends, for al fresco dining, political debate and demonstration.
It functions as an entertainment center filled with all the histrionics and
animation of conversation, courtship rituals, arguing, public displays of
affection, the circadian choreography of strolling, and the mime of Italian
gesticulation. In Italy all the people are “street people.”
I am not about to suggest that we transform San Diego into an Italian town.
We are, after all, a different culture; but increasingly we are a culture
that communicates in our streets almost solely by means of vanity license
plates, bumper stickers, baby-on-board signs, obscene gestures, and identifying
each other by the maxim that “you are what you drive." Perhaps
if we could improve the communication in our streets we might be able to eliminate
some of the discord and contentiousness we have created about our streets.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Excerpted from ©
James A. Clapp, “What’s in a Name?” The San Diego
Union, February, 17, 1991.
Posted: Fri - January 16, 2004
4.8:
Let's Eat Chinese: Part Two
The customary salutation
in greeting a Chinese is nihao (sort of “hello, how are you”).
But Chinese often greet one another with the phrase chi fan mei ah (have you
eaten yet?) Westerners may joke that forty-five minutes after a Chinese meal
one is hungry again. It may well be that the Chinese developed their cuisine
to actually produce that result: the Chinese love to eat, anytime, anywhere,
and often. And pretty much anything.
Waiter, there's a wu ying in my soup . . .
For some reason the admonition of my mother, when I was a child, came to me
when I flopped into a chair at a table facing the door. Words about the “starving
children of China.” It didn’t seem that there was much starvation
in Hong Kong: it is reported that there is a restaurant for every eight-hundred
inhabitants of Hong Kong and Kowloon. I had walked on past most of them until
my hunger overtook my fastidiousness. The chair reminded me of one of the
set from my grandmother’s kitchen when I was a kid back in New York:
tubular chrome frame with green plastic-covered vinyl seat and backrest with
some ambiguous pastel pattern. But the stains were from soy, not marinara,
sauce. I chose the chair rather than one of the rickety little stools arrayed
at round tables.
Over the open door of the restaurant a large exhaust fan turned lazily, chopping
the bright, electric rays of the neon across the street into a bright kaleidoscope.
Grease and dust hung from its blades, stalactites formed by the exhalations
of uncounted numbers of cigarettes, and untold breaths of “Crystal Chicken
Feet in Garlic Sauce,” Blanched Kidney and Liver,” and “Congee
with Congealed Duck’s Blood,” among other exotic treats. Now that
I saw the device that pumped the thick stew of aromas into the street that
had snared me, my appetite quailed. Only a few blocks away, in tourist-gorged
Nathan Road, there were golden arches and the gastro-intestinal assurances
of other familiar fast food logos.
So why was I sitting here?
I pondered the wobbly table with the chipped formica, the dirty ashtray, and
the incomprehensible menu held between the bottle of soy and the napkin dispenser.
This was the kind of establishment that separates the gweilos (white ghosts)
from the Chinese, and the real travelers from the tourists.
That it could also separate me from my dignity was not lost on me. My appreciation
of foreign food does not extend to the exotic; that generally means “no
innards.” My Parisian friend Bob once ordered me an andouillete, and
I decided when the unappetizing, half-cooked, stuffed section of stomach was
put before me that it was less insulting to politely decline to eat it than
to have somebody clean up after me.
So why was I sitting here, in a “congeetorium”? These restaurants
are actually called dai pai dong, literally “big stores in a row,”
although they are anything but big and are sort of the fast food joints of
Cantonese cuisine, although they are family-run, open for long hours just
to make ends meet, and the staff uniforms are only distinguished from patrons
by the excess soy sauce stains on them.
To say that the décor of these places is a Spartan-utilitarian would
be to confer upon it an underserved elegance. There are legions of them in
Hong Kong. These are where local people of limited means, those without Diners
Club cards, come for their congee, the ubiquitous and viscous rice porridge
garnished with just about anything—spring onions, pieces of fish or
fish heads, bits of chicken, or frog’s legs. The patrons may consume
it quickly, if they are local workman, slurping with relish with mouths just
centimeters above their bowls, or more leisurely, if they are one of the retired
neighborhood elders.
These congeetoria are where one encounters the true “natives”
of Hong Kong. Not the three-pieces suited expat investment banker from The
City or Wall Street, but the true resident of Cantoville. An old lady with
the adjustable aluminum cane sits almost motionless, her breathing imperceptible,
for a good twenty minutes. Her legs are splayed out for balance as she bestrides
one of the plastic, blue stools. A blue, quilted vest covers the upper part
of her black pajama suit. Opposite the spare, gray hair are little cloth Maryjane
shoes that are very much a signature of her cohort. When an elderly man in
a greasy brown shirt and trousers ambles in and sits at her table the old
woman does not register his presence. It is the way of a people who live in
such close and constant proximity. His skin is very dark, probably from years
of outdoor work, and his glasses, with their warped bows and frame a-kilter,
have lenses so thick that his eyes are grotesquely enlarged to the appearance
of some silly, imaginary space alien. Without uttering a word he is served
his bowl of congee, along with a sponge cake that looks like a brick of Styrofoam.
He’s a regular, too.
Two Chinese men were enthusiastically slurping from bowls over in one corner
and the man I assumed to be the waiter, wearing an apron, was sitting at a
table against the wall buried in a Cantonese scandal sheet and billows of
cigarette smoke. I kept the menu open in order to buy some time. Would I be
the sophisticated traveler having a gastronomic adventure, or would I cut
and run in the direction of Nathan Road. The moment of truth was only being
delayed by the waiter’s fascination with his tabloid. There was time
for reflection.
My mother’s words about those starving kids in China. She was always
telling me that she would send the food I left on my plate to the “starving
people in China.” So naturally I expected that the Chinese would by
now have acquired a taste for all the Brussels sprouts and lime jello I “sent”
them. But the Chinese are smarter than to adopt some gweilo kid’s leavings.
I didn’t see a single Brussel sprout or squiggly lime jello dessert
anywhere in China. They would rather to take some animal “innards”
that look like “road-kill” to a Westerner and turn them into “delicacies”
I was totally unfamiliar with because no Chinese mom has ever been heard to
say: “You eat up all those duck’s feet and sea slugs or I’ll
send them to those starving American kids.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t identify most anything on a “congeetorium”
menu because it was in Chinese, I couldn’t identify them by sight. Very
little is wasted in the Chinese diet. This is a people who have known more
famine than plenty throughout their long history. Virtually anything that
flies, swims, walks, or squirms is fair game for the gustatory latitude of
the Sino-palate. To the Chinese “all creatures great and small”
translates as “all creatures, lunch and dinner”. Food stalls are
festooned with dripping, or desiccated, cooked or raw, creature body parts,
all body parts: goat heads, duck’s feet, fish lips and eyeballs, pigs
trotters, and things you can’t name. At the public market nearby my
flat the stalls for meat have the gruesome appearance of a zoo that has had
a direct hit by a fragmentation bomb. There are delicacies displayed in restaurant
windows that seem to have come from outer space.
The waiter looked over at me again, but didn’t move. I think he was
enjoying my discomfort. But I was starting to worry about giving offense.
I always fear that I’m going to give insult to a Chinese who is honoring
me with a delicacy like Bird’s Nest soup, which is actually made from
the bird’s saliva. I’ve had enough with what bird’s do to
my car; I’ll be damned if I want them spitting in my soup. But I don’t
care if I insult a Chinese by turning down “shark-fin soup.” The
suppliers of shark fins simply capture a shark, cut off its fins, and then
toss it back into the sea to die a painful death. I tasted shark fin soup
once and don’t think sharks should die for something that tastes that
mediocre.In fairness I should report that a Chinese guide once complained
to me that the food in America was not very good at all. He had escorted a
delegation of Chinese businessmen to California and brought home as gifts
some canned food.
“I am sorry to say that the dog meat I brought home to my family did
not taste very good,” he complained to me.
“Dog meat! Where the hell did you buy canned dog meat in America?”
I replied, wondering if the SPCA knew about this.
“At the supermarket, the big supermarket. There were many cans of dog
meat with many different names. I bought several kinds but they were all not
very good. I am glad that I did not buy the cat meat.”
I wished he had bought canned tuna; at least in that case the picture on the
label identifies what’s inside not the animal is supposed to eat it.
I thought it better for me to lose face by being from a country that didn’t
know how to prepare dog meat, than to cause the guide to lose face by informing
him that he had been feeding his family American pet food.
I must have been gazing, lost in my reverie of past meals and hypnotized by
the lazy exhaust fan when I noticed the waiter standing beside my table. He
had a look on his face that seemed to say “Now what have we here?”
I sensed a bit of an attitude of superiority in his posture, something that
said: “OK Mr. Gweilo, let’s see what you can order from a menu
in Chinese.”
But I was ready for him. He wasn’t going to see me bolt for the door
and run for the comfort of those golden arches. No way. In my best mentally-rehearsed
Cantonese I looked up at him with a confident gaze and intoned: Mgoi, yaat
wùh bóulei (“A pot of dark tea, please”).
© 2002, James A. Clapp. Posted: Wed - January 14, 2004
4.7:
. . .
and they shall be led into the land of corn [Protocols 23:9]
Immigration: Part Three.
Some of my subscribers have already seen this piece, which was sent to them
in email from Hong Kong over year ago. But it seemed relevant to current events,
and I felt that this time it could use a graphic to illustrate one of its
points.
The Cornhusker Solution
In Hong Kong I met a fellow American in that distinctly American institution
called Starbuck’s. He’s a business consultant who been here for
several years, and is therefore more of an “ex-pat” than I am.
He’s from the East Coast, and although I generally don’t seek
out fellow Americans, it is nice on occasion to have a chat over cappuccino
over some “American topics” with someone who really knows what
you are referring to.
Cedric, (not his real name) is an African-American, and I gauge him to be
in his late fifties. At first we talked amiably about basketball, New York,
and growing up in cities. But one day he brought a business associate and
the conversation took a disturbing turn. They began speaking pejoratively
about a “Jewish” businessman they clearly did not like. That was
not so bothersome, since it is not inappropriate to dislike a person who (although
why does their ethnicity have to be specified) happens to be Jewish. What
bothered me more was that they moved to a line that was unambiguously anti-Semitic,
and Cedric added that “they” weren’t any “less trustworthy
to deal with in business than the Chinese.”
I was shocked, but they must not have noticed because they kept giving me
those “of course you know this to be true” kinds of smiles. Cedric’s
business associate was British, and at first I was embarrassed that a fellow
American, and an African-American, who should know about such racial characterizations,
was speaking this way in front of him. In fact, Cedric had claimed to have
been an activist in the American civil rights movement, but later claimed
to have become disillusioned when “the Jews tried to undermine our social
and economic progress,” as he insisted was part of their “conspiracy.”
In fact, his associate seemed to be in full accord with Cedric’s views,
and they seemed to have both read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Starbuck’s was beginning to sound a little too much like a beer hall
in Munich in the early 1930s and I avoided it for a few days. But a week later
I was back and Cedric and his friend appeared and asked if they could share
my table. Cedric set down his copy of The South China Morning Post, on which
there was a lead story about the Israeli Army’s troop movements in to
the West Bank in response to Palestinian suicide bombers. There was no avoiding
the subject.
Cedric discoursed chapter and verse on the “illegal Israeli occupation
of Palestine,” linking it with “the complicity and financial support
of the control of media and banking and the American government by international
Jewry.” There was a vague reference to the assassinations of the Kennedy’s
and Martin Luther King. Cedric claims he was “there” at the time
King was killed and James Earl Ray “didn’t do it,” but he
is “not at liberty to say who did.” His primary rhetorical stratagem
is to aver that he knows from personal experience the “real story,”
but can’t divulge it because of some vague danger to himself. The world
was finally on to the Jews, he claimed, and they would soon be thrown out
of their illegal state and the Middle East. They couldn’t hide behind
that holocaust stuff anymore, according to him.
I didn’t want to ask him if the holocaust “really happened”
because I was about ready to vomit at this point. But for some reason I asked
where he felt the Israelis should go if they can’t stay where they are.
Cedric looked at me as though I were an idiot that should understand that
the Israelis would be exterminated and not need go anywhere with geographic
coordinates. I guess I was supposed to say: “How silly of me. Of course,
the 'Final Solution’.”
Just then Cedric’s associate chimed in and suggested something I had
not heard in some time. I call it “The Cornhusker Solution” and
it goes something like this: America has always supported Israel; ergo, why
doesn’t America take the Israeli’s in. The proposal goes that
there is plenty of room in the middle of the USA (probably why he didn’t
suggest the UK) to give them a place to live far away from suicide bombers.
Consistent with previous descriptions I had heard, Cedric’s friend specifically
mentioned Nebraska and Iowa (could there be a little conspiracy here?). I
can just visualize Sharon leading his people through the rows of corn as high
as an elephant’s eye.
In the face of such irrationality sometimes the only defense (offence?) is
to try to be as rational as possible. I felt this strange compulsion to strap
ten pounds of French Roast and a pound of C-4 on my body and caffinate these
guys to death, but I forced myself to feign serious consideration of their
“solution”: Nebraska as the New Promised Land.
So I asked them to consider that Nebraska might not be a particularly good
fit for the displaced Israelis. Nebraska is pretty much about two things.
The first is corn, and there doesn’t seem to be very much in the Jewish
tradition that is related to corn, nothing about unleavened corn or kosher
tortilla chips. Not many jobs in corn either, most plowing, planting and husking
is mechanized these days. I figured that being businessmen, Cedric and his
associate would appreciate this analysis. But they just looked back blankly.
The other Nebraska thing is football. Nebraskans love their football team,
the Cornhuskers. If Israelis can’t be real cornhuskers, how about football
players. It would be a great way to fit in if they could help bring Nebraska
another national championship. There have been a few good Jewish football
players. Ron Mix, for example, a lawyer now, who made it into the NFL Hall
of Fame, and Tim Rossovich, a mad-cap linebacker from USC, come to mind. I’m
sure there are others.
The uniform of runningback Joshua Finklestein of Tel Aviv
A & M's Mighty Macabees will be empty next year as the Isreali star football
player has transferred to the University of Nebraska in the USA.
But most Jews, it seems, squandered their chances for football stardom by
spending more time in the campus library than on the playing fields. What
are then chances, then, of out of the four or so million Israelis re-settled
in to Nebraska that there might be a wide receiver with 4.6 speed, or a quarterback
that can read the blitz (that’s blitz, not blintz) and thread the needle
to his tight end in the red zone (not sea) for six points. Not very good I
argued. Then there’s the problem of getting those names, Weinstein and
Mandlebaum, etc, spelled across the backs of their jerseys. The team huddle
would look like a marquee for a law or brokerage firm. I didn’t think
that either the Israelis or Cornhusker fans would think much of the football
idea. There would be the inevitable jokes about the Kosher Kornhuskers, or
the Cohenhuskers.
Cedric said there’s always Iowa, then. There’s corn there, too,
but the teams are called “Hawkeyes.” But that seemed a stretch,
too. So many Jews seem to wear glasses; all that studying for the international
conspiracy, you know. Hard on the eyes.
But then there is wrestling. Iowa is known for its great wrestling teams.
And no need to get those long names spelled on the backs of jerseys. There
have been Jewish wrestling teams, I said.
“Right,” Cedric’s friend chimed in, “in the Olympics.”
“Munich Olympics. 1972.” I said . . .
They both had curious little smiles, but said nothing.
So I told them that I think the Israelis feel they are better off right where
they are. And if you bigots and suicide bombers don’t like that, there’s
a solution to that, too. It’s the “Fuck You!” solution,
and as the great Woody Allen would add: “And I say that with all due
respect.”
©2002, James A. Clapp. Posted: Mon - January 12, 2004
4.6:
Back in the USA [Immigration: Part Two]
Only fifteen years ago,
in 1989, passengers were smoking on airliners, even standing in the aisles
waiting for toilets. Some were probably even using their nail clippers or
tweezers without being deprived by security of those lethal weapons. Moreover,
that was only a scant ten years before that when Iranian revolutionaries had
kept Americans hostage for 444 days and Iranians were immigrating to the land
of the Great Satan. A lot has changed since then, and a lot hasn't.
Landing in America
The woman who slumped into the seat next to me on the Alitalia flight from
Milan looked exhausted. She was wild-eyed, certainly disoriented, and probably
terrified, maybe even disturbed. Her slip hung down several inches below her
cheap, flower-print dress, her footwear was ragged slippers.
When she fell back into the seat her head clunked against the window, and
the cheap, canvas bag she dropped spilled fruit and sundries around her feet.
She was asleep, or passed out, in seconds, mouth agape, displaying several
teeth in need of attention. I fully expected to be vomited upon before we
reached cruising altitude.
“Just my luck,” I mumbled. Fourteen cramped and tedious hours
ahead before I would sight the perpetually-clogged LA freeways. Some fortunate
fool was up in the First Class cabin seated next to Sophia Loren, the perpetually
stunning actress who also boarded at Milan, and the fates that issue boarding
passes had matched me with this poor, sick wretch.
Our multi-lingual flight attendant had difficulty waking her to get her to
buckle her seat belt. He had to use mime, after Italian, Spanish, French and
German received only blank stares. English failed, too, and I knew that conversation
was definitely out when I spied the Farsi-English phrase book among the fruit
and crackers on the floor.
But that was quickly replaced by a more unsettling concern when we leveled
out at 35,000 feet, the “no-smoking” light went out, and the spacious
“emergency exit” area on which our seats fronted became a smoke-filled
Tehran square. My seatmate pulled out some crumpled Marlboros and her face
brightened slightly at hearing her own language. At least she wasn't alone.
My own face probably reflected my grim speculations that there might be a
bomb-toting revolutionary guard among what was proving to be a village of
Iranian passengers. My wish not to be vomited upon was replaced by the hope
that the lucky seatmate of Sophia was not Salman Rushdie. Every bump and clunk
of turbulence that I used to ignore now took on ominous portent. I smiled
weakly at my seatmate; it was requited. But we never exchanged a word.
© 2003, James A. Clapp
Well, as they say, I am here to tell the tale. My battered luggage, which
I was going to discard after this trip rubbed against Sophia's when it came
onto the conveyor—yes, she stood there patiently, like the rest of us—so
I think I'll keep it forever. And the last I saw of my seatmate was her disheveled
body in the stalled customs line for “aliens,” hauling a cheap
suitcase and some bursting cartons. My customs agent hastily flipped through
my passport, said “welcome home,” and waved me through.
I was, as Springsteen might paraphrase himself, “back in the U.S.A.”
My seatmate, as I had learned from another of her group, was an immigrant
to our "land of opportunity."
On the flight down to San Diego I wondered how the land she had heard was
the “Great Satan” would turn out for her. America, and the world
are very different from the time my grandparents came over from Italy in steerage,
more complex, more difficult. Our earlier immigrants arrived at a time in
which much of America was being built: canals, railroads, industry, and especially
its cities. The country needed willing labor with strong backs and not much
else. Since that time much has changed in every facet of American life that
has made it more difficult for immigrants to gain an economic foothold, especially
massive structural changes in the economy. The new waves of immigrants may
be coming to America with the same hopes as their predecessors, but it's a
different America. They may have the same spirit, but they will find America's
spirit diminished. They will find it freer than their homelands, but they
will encounter the xenophobic and “Nativist” resistance that has
always been here. Most will be willing to do their stints at stoop labor,
pump Slurpees at 7-11s, and work long hours at their family groceries in their
ethnic enclaves to get to their chance at the American dream; but they will
also learn that America's promises don't come with guarantees.
I could only conclude that she was coming here with some hope, and as I was
returning from several months abroad with much of the gnawing cynicism with
which I had left, I envied her that. I could only hope that she would not
encounter the suspicion that often greets the alien, in her case overlaid
with the enmity between Iran and America, and be prejudged by her religion
or the behavior of the government of her homeland? Neither of us had landed
in the country of Satan; but sadly, for myself at least, these days it doesn't
seem much like “God's country” either. Maybe my seatmate, and
her Asian, Middle Eastern and Central American counterparts are just what
this country needs to find itself—some new blood. I doubt I'll ever
get another chance to ask her what she thinks of America, or, for that matter,
to ask Sophia.
________________________________________________________________________________
Radio Essay No. 48, © 1989, James A. Clapp. Aired KPBS-FM, Public Radio,
November 18, 1989
Posted: Sun - January 11, 2004
4.5:
Come One, Come All
[Immigration, Part One]
Hey, what's this green goo on my burger!
Yesterday George Boosh
announced his new immigration policy. Un-documented workers will get a “not
an amnesty” three-year amnesty for sneaking into the country so they
can legally fill jobs that American workers putatively will not fill. Though
posed as an “economic” policy that will allow worthy workers a
slice of American pie while fulfilling an economic need, one can hardly not
be suspicious and cynical about Mr. Boosh’s motives. Supposedly, too,
it will also have a “homeland security” payoff, since the un-docs
will be registered with the government and we will be able to keep track of
them when they sneak away from the bean fields for their flying lessons. They
can also go back and forth to Mexico (yes I realize that I’m singling
out Latinos here, see below) at will. So when it is Code Orange keep a sharp
eye out for Osama Gutierrez.
But there’s other possible political benefits to Mr. Boosh.
First, he pissed off his erstwhile buddy Vincente Fox over the Iraqi War,
and this is a good way to patch things up, as Fox would like more open borders
so that Mexico, a far more prosperous country than it seems, can jettison
more of its peasantry to El Norte to send billions back home to their families.
That way the Mexican government doesn’t have to bother with economic
reforms and income distribution that give its people a decent chance at home.
[It should be noted that probably more than half of the estimated 12 million
un-documented workers are from south of the border.]
Immigration sign, Puerto Madryn, Argentina 
© James A. Clapp
Second, Mr. Boosh might
be remembering what happened to California Governor Pete Wilson when Wilson
backed Prop 187, the anti-immigration measure that resulted that backfired
and killed Wilson’s presidential ambitions. Sucking up to California’s
huge Latino population, a good number of which seem strangely enamored with
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won't let their un-docs have driver's licenses
(maybe it was that “Hasta la vista, baby” line), might better
chances for winning the state next year. It’s a gamble though. He might
be pissing off many of the Latino’s who are already here and working
because of the possibility his policy will encourage even more illegal immigration
and force down wages even further. But then this is what probably would make
his agri-business and other corporate friends happy: lower wages mean higher
profits. And you thought Willie was “slick.”
Never mind that the day after this announcement came the news that in the
last quarter the US economy lost another 26,000 manufacturing jobs. You know,
those well-paid and benefited (and often unionized) lunch bucket jobs that
are capable of supporting a whole family, and that the unemployment rate still
dangles just under 6%. So Mr. Boosh can perhaps make the case that his employment
numbers are better, made so by Social Security paying (which they can take
back with them) bean pickers, burger flippers, domestics, and leaf blowers,
while not doing much to stem the hemorrhage (exchange?) of higher wage work
and productivity to China, India, and Mexico.
Something did indeed need to be done about America’s immigration policies,
and Bush might have done worse than with this policy. Then again, the immigration
amnesty might be part of a broader policy view. Mr. Boosh is supposed to announce
next week his policy for putting an American manned space station on the moon
(to be built by Halliburton), not presumably (to the chagrin of John Ashcroft)
to inter suspected terrorists, but as a staging point for eventual possible
colonization of Mars. (No, I’m not kidding.) The station will be manned
by astronauts Juan Rodriguez and Jesus Martinez. (OK, now I'm kidding.) But
consider this: those pictures of Mars we're getting now don't show any agricultural
fields, leaves, or golden arches; so if there really are little green, gooey
Martians, as we have long suspected and feared, the question might be how
many of them might try to sneak into America for those bean-picker, burger-flipper,
leaf-blower jobs.
You better pray over that one a little longer, Mr. Boosh.
Posted: Sat - January 10, 2004
4.4:
Let's Eat Chinese: Part One
China is dispatching hundreds
of thousands of civet cats, who have the misfortune of being fingered as the
little varmits who brought Sars to the country. It matters little, since they
would have been eaten in any case, pretty much any other wild critter that
is hauled into Chinese kitchens. The wilder the beast the more coveted (and
expensive) it is to the Chinese palate. The Chinese will also eat parts of
animals that most Westerners didn't know existed. Thus, eating Chinese can
be a real adventure, and for those of fussy palate, a survival experience.
Death By Duck
La Tour d’Argent. Pride of the new [Tokyo] Otani Hotel since 1984, La
Tour d’Argent is a worthy scion of its ritzy Parisian parent [which
features] . . .in the main dining room. . .the enormous drapery-sculpted marble
carving table, with its silver duck press. The specialty of the house is,
naturally, caneton: as in Paris you receive a card recording the number of
the duck you were served. In 1921 when Crown Prince Hirohito dined at the
Tour d’Argent in Paris, he had duck number 53,210; the numbers in Tokyo
began with 53,211 when the restaurant opened. [Fodor’s JAPAN 90, p.
182]
My guide, Mei Ping, looked like she was ready to turn me over to the People’s
Liberation Army. I had suspected for a couple of days that she might have
once been a “Red Guard”. It was that stern, j’accuselook
that said: “You running capitalist dog. You decadent Western pig. Admit
that the reason you wanted to take the subway in Beijing is to discover the
weaknesses in our Civil Defense system! We have ways of getting at the truth.”
That sort of look.
Now she was giving me that look again, because I had the effrontery to decline
the much-ballyhooed “Peking Duck Dinner”. To add to the cultural
insult I had asked to be taken to a restaurant that had a Western menu, preferably
one that had as a choice: Spaghetti Bolognese.
She glared at me, but told the driver to take me to the Gloria Plaza Hotel.
Chinese food may be one of my very favorite cuisines, but I can’t eat
it every day, and there are definitely a few dishes that I would prefer to
starve before eating. But Chinese food in general is right up there near the
top of the list for me, though not as high as Spaghetti Bolognese.
Still, Chinese food was the only cuisine that I had been eating for nearly
two weeks. And now that I was in Beijing, where it was possible to get some
variety into my diet I craved Spaghetti Bolognese. I was obsessed with thoughts
of rich meat-laced sauce over al dente pasta, not those flaccid Chinese noodles
I’d been slurping up for days on end. And nothing could be further from
my palate’s desire than Peking Duck!
That’s what really got Mei Ping’s goat (or should it be “duck”);
that I would refuse a dish that the Chinese just relish, and that every tour
of China includes as the piéce de rèsistance. She took it as
a cultural insult.
It wasn’t that I just craved, needed, some Spaghetti Bolognese, it was
also that I had this fear of Peking Duck. Or rather, Death by Duck!
I had read in a book by a journalist from a respectable newspaper that, since
China had opened itself to the West in the early 1970s and large numbers of
westerners had come to visit its magnificent sights and eat its delicious
food, there had emerged a curious dark, and little known phenomenon quietly
referred to as “death by duck.
The scenario of this form of demise was described as follows: tour groups
containing large numbers of overweight and under-exercised Americans come
to Beijing, a city with a pollution index equivalent to three packs of cigarettes
(or one pack of a Chinese brand) per day, and are toured through the huge
complex of the Temple of Heaven, then taken to the Great Wall, which they
clamber over in the suffocating summer heat, and then are returned to their
hotels for the promised and much-ballyhooed, Peking Duck Dinner. Take the
permutation of lack of physical fitness, bad air, over exertion, dehydration,
and the sudden infusion of enough fat and cholesterol to clog an artery the
diameter of a garden hose and you have the formula for “Death by Duck”.
The book went on to say that there’s a not inconsiderable number of
Western tourists have returned home through customs in a box and Chinese characters
on certificate that indicate, if in clinical terms, Chi ya er si (eat duck
cause death).
At first surprised by the information I was less so when I researched the
recipe for the preparation of Peking Duck. It’s been perilous being
a duck in China at least since the 15th century when the delicacy became a
dish for more than just the aristocracy. They are herded in great numbers
through the streets, piled like feathered firewood on the backs of tricycles,
their carcasses hang ignominiously, curing in the open air on bamboo poles
on buildings and balconies, strung-up like little baby sleeper pajamas, and
they end up dangling in their bronzed skins in restaurant windows.
Killer ducks on display in restaurant window 
The cooking process is long and complex. After being scalded, coated with
molasses, inflated with air, and hung out to dry for up to two days, they
are roasted over different woods to a golden brown. The lacquered-looking
duck is cut up and served with a sweet bean sauce and paper-thin pancakes.
The most favored morsels are the vessel-clogging, duck skin.
Of course I did not related my phobia of “death by duck” to Mei
Ping. Such a faux pas on my part might have resulted in my serving a few years
as one of those poor wretches whose unenviable job it is to tricycle around
the old hutongs (Beijing’s compounded, dense old neighborhoods) collecting
last night’s chamber pot contents and ferrying the ‘night soil’
out to local farms. But a few years later I made the acquaintance of a veteran
China Travel Service guide, a Mr. Wang. We exchanged addresses and when I
arrived home I wrote to him to inquire what he knew about “D by D”.
A few months later his letter arrived to say that in his fourteen years of
guiding American tourists he knew of no cases of “D by D,” nor
did any of his colleagues. In fact, he said even the term “death by
duck” was unfamiliar to him or his colleagues and claimed that the author
of the book I had read must have fabricated the whole this to “. . .
make his story more (sic) fascinated.”
Sure. Mr. Wang doth protest too much. Fourteen years and thousands of foreign
guests gorging themselves on Peking Ducks, and not a single victim of the
deadly Chinese treat? Sounds like the official China Travel Service line to
me. Pass the Parmesan for my Bolognese, please. For my money I am “fascinated”
by the possibility that if Emperor Hirohito had experienced ‘death by
duck” in 1921 the entire history of the Far East might have been different.
China might have been spared the invasion and ravages of the Japanese thanks
to duck No. 53,210. That Peking duck would have been a real hero for his country!
Posted: Thu - January 8, 2004
4.3:
The Home of the Gods
When two countries with the means and the mutual animosity
to nuke the daylights out of one another and mess up the world are sitting
down to see if they can make peace a cautious hope ensues. Yesterday political
leaders Pakistani President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Vajaypee shook
hands and are attempting a reconciliation that might get over the wounds of
three wars and nearly a nuclear encounter in 2002. India and Pakistan have
been at it with each other since the Brits precipitously bailed out of their
jewel of the imperial at midnight on August 15, 1947. Their mutual slaughter
on that occasion has only been on hold since then, with disputed hegemony
over Kashmir as a political flashpoint, and, the ubiquitous Hindu-Muslim antipathies
reaching down to the very marrow of Indian civil society.
It is one of the paradoxes of nations that the difference that give them a
rich cultural stew are often the very features that often threaten societal
annihilation. So it seems with India, an enduringly fascinating and frustrating
country I have had the opportunity to visit on two occasions. The first time,
in 1992, could have been the last visit there, or anywhere, when my dear friend
Sue and I found ourselves in the middle of what I called . . .
The Bombay Land Use Jihad
The last thing I would have thought as the huge sewer pipes rolled ominously
toward my taxi was that I might be done in by a land use. After all, this
was Bombay, and the land use at issue was nearly a thousand kilometers away
in Ayodhya.
But this was India, and the land use was a mosque, one reputedly built on
the site of the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama in 1,500 B.C. Never mind
that the mosque was built only thirty years after Columbus discovered America.
Like I said, this was India, and disputes go back a long way in these parts.
And so do the antipathies over which god or goddess is the rightful resident
of a piece of holy ground. The current controversy was precipitated when 4,000
Hindu "kar sevaks" pulled the Babri Mosque down with their bare
hands yesterday, and now there were aftershocks all over India.
Streetsleepers of Bombay 
Fires were already burning in several parts of Bombay, in one of the areas
of "chawls," where tens of thousands inhabit these ancient and rickety
tenements at incredible densities, and in the teeming shanty-colonies that
through squinted-eyes and pinched-nostrils, are indistinguishable, visually,
olfactorily, and, socially, from (un)sanitary land-fills.
People were already dead, slain as much by religious bigotry and hatred as
by the knives that are the preferred implement of dispatching their victims
to Allah or to another round of Hindu reincarnation. Casualties of a holy
land use war.
"Go for it!" I encouraged the driver, who seemed to be considering
abandoning his taxi and fare as hundreds of others already had. So he weaved
between and around the huge sewer pipes that could have crushed the taxi like
a Pepsi can. The irony of it all wasn't lost on me: in a city that sorely
needs some sewerage they use the pipes to block streets and conduct murderous
riots.
That wasn't all. Here we were on my way back from a visit to Gandhi's house,
the pacifist who had several times threatened to starve himself to death to
arrest the Hindu-Muslim carnage that took more than a million lives after
the British partitioned the sub-continent into India and two Pakistans (major
land use dispute) in 1947. And one of the dioramas at Gandhi's house showed
him being assassinated by a Hindu fanatic who belonged to the Hindu extremist
faction that is precursor to the current kar sevaks. Not to mention that me,
a lapsed-Catholic, had a good chance of being killed in an officially secular
state in a war between two religions. Would it be preferable to have my throat
slit by a mob of Muslims, or Hindus? Better not at all.
"Keep going!" I ordered the driver.
In the previous days' wanderings about this exotic and swollen city it had
seemed there was little left to be disputed in the use of its land. In reflection
of its social castes, the architecture and land use of Bombay co-exist and
juxtapose in astonishing variance. Below our window in the renowned Taj Mahal
Hotel reposed hundreds whose beds consisted of littered and feculent sidewalks.
Here, and along most of the streets of this bustling metropolis, untold numbers
live, eat, copulate, sleep, beg, and die, alfresco.
The Taj Hotel, like the Victoria Terminus train station, and the University
of Bombay radiate the Gothic splendors of the departed British Raj, cheek
by jowl with deity-festooned Hindu temples, and pitiable enterprises countless
street vendors. On the west side of town splashy high-rise modern hotels garland
the magnificent corniche of Chowpatty Beach, interspersed with derelict buildings
and homeless. Soul-searing poverty and hopelessness taint every land use in
Bombay. There is nothing, and everything, to fight and die for.
Our taxi pulled into the relative safety of the port the Bombay. The death
toll had reached seventy. Only as our ship glided past the Gateway Arch of
India did it occur to me that, for so many here there is probably little more
to hope for than a better afterlife. It seems like the only hope left in a
country that makes jihad over where their gods can reside.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Originally published in the San Diego American Planning Association
Journal, © James A, Clapp, March, 1993
Posted: Wed - January 7, 2004
4.2:
Faith and Light
The Bushes are nothing
if not clever at coming up with ways of providing social services that do
not involve much governmental expenditure. They are not the first by any means,
their immediate predecessor being Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say ‘No’”
anti-drug policy still holding the record for Republican parsimony. Of course,
as we know all too well, this allows the GOP to just say “yes”
when their rich and corporate contributors ask them to ante up with tax cuts,
de-regs, and sweetheart Halliburton deals.
Boy George’s version of the “cheap-out” is his Faith-Based
Initiatives, a transparent policy gizmo that shovels some ingratiating bucks
in the direction of the religious right and helps in his favorite hobby of
snatching bricks from the wall between church and state. In a twisted mimic
of the ACLU, Mr. Bush promulgates his initiative on the bizarre logic that
not allowing religious organizations a chunk of Federal largesse (forget the
tax breaks) violates their civil rights.
The Faith-Based Initiatives guidebook, titled “Protecting the Civil
Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring
Rights Must Be Preserved” Bush is quoted in its preamble as claiming
that “. . . government can and should support social services provided
by religious people, as long as those services go to anyone in need, regardless
of their faith. And when government gives that support, charities and faith-based
programs should not be forced to change their character or compromise their
mission.” [If you are going to throw up now, please turn away from your
computer.]
Hopefully, this little back door play will go the same way as his dad’s
forgettable “1000 Points if Light”. Remember that one? People
would just volunteer to do things for their communities and country; they
would shine as a “point of light.” Well, at least Bush I’s
program was a secular one and not some charade to pay the Religious Right
to turning junkies to mainlining Jesus. And, back in 1989 Bush Pere’s
cheap-out was was more mysterious, too.
Un Point De Lumiere
Like Gov. Dukakis and many other Americans I probably spent more time than
it was worth trying to figure out what George Bush meant by "a thousand
points of light". Bush used the phrase in his nomination acceptance speech,
and since nobody bothered to ask him what it meant, he employed it numerous
times in his campaign. Dukakis finally put the question to him in one of their
television debates, but ironically, Bush supplied no illumination on the subject.
When one of my students of American Civilization at the University of Paris
asked me if I could explain this curious idiom to her I was forced to admit
my ignorance.
That very night, as I lay awake in bed still pondering this mysterious metaphor,
a sign of its possible revelation seemed to miraculously appear before me.
There, on my darkened ceiling, shone a single point of light, less than an
inch in diameter, put there by a tiny hole in the window drape which allowed
a beam of light to deposit this spot of illumination directly above me. It
was as though I, like some zealously pious person hankering for a metaphysical
clue, had been chosen as the prophet who would reveal to the relief of a perplexed
world the meaning of "a thousand points of light."
But I soon learned that the revelation would not come without some effort.
Perhaps prayer was necessary, or maybe speaking in tongues or some endlessly
repeated mantra was required before the revelation, like the light that felled
Saul of Tarsus from his horse, would come. I tried them all. Nothing worked.
The hours of deep night slid by and my frustration mounted, worried that my
single point of light would melt away in the approaching daylight if the answer
didn't come soon. I felt like Tantalus; so near yet so far. It was excruciating.
Why had George uttered this profundity in the first place, I asked myself.
Was he some preppie prophet of the New Age who had the final answer to the
world's ills, but first the world would have to decipher his mysterious message,
the true meaning of "a thousand points of light"? Why was I chosen
to be his instrument of revelation? Why would I have to be the one to release
Dukakis from the torment of this conundrum?
The night wore on and I was growing desperate. The little point of light taunted
me; it almost seemed to be laughing at my struggle. Maybe it's something altogether
different, I thought; maybe a UFO, maybe not the Bush mystery at all. I debated
getting up and throwing open the drape to see if Speilberg was shooting a
movie outside. But I dared not because the little point of light might not
return. I remained convinced that the meaning of the other 999 points of light
lay in the one on my ceiling. I needed to try something else to get the answer,
and soon.
Bush is president now, I pondered; maybe the answer lay there, in his deeds
since occupying the Oval Office. So I began to review his policies and accomplishments
since his inauguration. The budget, I thought, maybe the answer is in his
budget for the nation. Were there any points of light in that? No, nothing
I could see, only a little snipping here, a little addition there, nothing
different or definite, nothing like some brilliant plan to reduce the deficit—now
that would use up a few points of light. But there was nothing.
Maybe there is a clue in his policy on drugs; that problem could use a few
points of light. But nothing special there either, a drug czar, a bit more
money and a lot more platitudes. Just more of the same, and no points of light.
Crime? I tried that one, too. George was going to rid the world of the Willie
Hortons, I remembered. Another dead end. In fact, George hasn't much enthusiasm
for ridding the nation of automatic rifles, or "hunting rifles,"
as he calls them.
I tried foreign policy as well; but there doesn't seem to be one. No policies,
no points of light.
It was becoming maddening. The point of light hovered overhead, but I could
hear the church bells of Paris. Morning was only minutes away now. The point
of light would be gone soon, and with it my chance a place in history! I was
exhausted, mentally, physically and spiritually. I could do nothing but mindlessly
stare at the little point of light.
Then! What was that? It appeared to move. Yes, it was definitely moving. The
little point of light was trying to tell me something. What? "Talk to
me, little point of light," I pleaded, "talk to me!"
Finally the answer was mine. Did the little point of light talk to me? No,
not actually. No, but some inspiration sent me to my old Psychology 101 book,
to the section about optical illusions. It told me that a single point of
light when stared at in the dark, will appear to move. But the movement is
only an illusion. That was the answer: Nothing is Moving!
So now I had the answer, although I didn't feel much better for knowing it.
By George, I thought, as a president that guy is one helluva psychologist.
He sure had me fooled with those "thousand points of light."
I picked up the phone and dialed Dukakis.
"Hello, Mike?" Is that you? How's Kitty doing? Great! . . . Listen,
Mike, are you sitting down . . .?"
___________________________________________________________________________________
Radio Essay No. 44, © James A. Clapp, Aired KPBS-FM, July 27, 1989.
Posted: Tue - January 6, 2004
4.1:
HAPPY NEW YEAR! (I think)
It's Code Orange at the
Orange Bowl. Zillions of flowers are dying on stupid floats up at the Rose
parade. And there's an astrologically ominous number hanging over the next
365 days.
2004!? Oh, No,
Not 2000 and F-F-Four! Maybe I’ll Just Stay in Bed This Year
The number four, in Cantonese, is pronounced sei. The same sound (or close
enough to it to be scary) as the Cantonese word for “death” I
am told. The building in which I lived in Hong Kong lists 35 floors in the
elevator, but there are no floors numbered 4, 14, 24, or 34. So it really
has only 31 floors. It may be inviting bad luck to live in a floor with the
number four in it, but is it bad luck to lie about the number of floors in
your building? And, isn’t the fourth floor from the ground floor the
fourth floor, no matter what number you put on it? Well, maybe not. You can
confuse things by calling the ground floor the rez-de-chaussée, like
they do in France; so do you count that one or not? Maybe that’s the
idea in Hong Kong: to let the evil spirits sort it out.
Watch out for this number 
It’s also the Year 4701 of the Chinese Calendar. That’s two f-f-f-fours,
bracketing the year. Things are looking scary.
Well, I for one, am not going to buy into this superstitious nonsense. But
at the risk of bringing bad luck upon myself I need to make clear that there
is plenty of superstition in Western cultures, and that I regard all religion,
or any cosmology or folklore that interprets causes and effects on unsubstantiated
and unproved or unprovable circumstances, as superstitious. All religions,
born in the fear of the unknown and the wish for a certain and beneficent
fate, are suffused with means and methods to seek spiritual favor.
I’m also not going to panic because I find superstition to be intellectually
lazy. Rather than engage in the challenging and rigorous process of trying
to understand the world, the riddles of existence, and the relationships between
causes and effects, superstition substitutes deistic and demonic whims and
the vortices of luck and fortune. The causes for events and circumstances
are assigned their etiology from spurious random associations, without any
probable or verifiable empirical foundations. The superstitious sneeze because
somebody is supposedly thinking of them, not because they have inhaled a spore
of pollen. (How many times one sneezes determines what they are thinking about
you.) There are specious assignments of “significance” to events.
When does “bad luck” or “good luck” begin or end?
One is fired from a job (bad luck), but in consequence finds a better job
that one would not otherwise have sought (good luck). And so on: yesterday’s
bad luck may release today’s good fortune, and, of course, vice versa.
Yet, the superstitious person tends to take events out of context in interpreting
their significance.
Second, superstition does not take into account that much of life’s
circumstances are “influenced” by one’s birth statistics
(genes, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religious setting, social class),
not birth sign. Where randomness does play a “luck” factor, often
“luck” (aside from pure lottery-like randomness) is actually influenced
by one’s actions, and even by a subliminal and unrecognized “reflexive
rationality.” Desist from waving nine-irons on golf courses during thunder
storms and one’s “luck” at avoiding electrocution is increased
despite whether one’s horoscope has advised against avoiding large open
spaces for that day.
Thirdly. Superstition is a belief in un-sensed, yet acknowledged forces, an
endless search for those behaviors (prayer, supplication, ritual, feng shui)
that move those forces towards or away from malevolence and beneficence. Being
a-rational, or non-rational, they are never formed into theories or laws,
regularities that might be employed proactively to influence one’s fate.
The only law of superstition is that of what might be called “immediate
precedence”: what action or event that is associated with a subsequent
consequence, however spurious, can be taken as causal validation. Get on the
Number 4 bus and some kid pukes on your new shoes and you “know”
exactly what caused what.
Fifth (I decided to skip Sei). At its religious level, then, superstition
is primarily expressed through propitiation and supplication. In its Eastern
versions, this is primarily concerned with beseeching those forces that can
do good things for the supplicant. But these actions are not necessarily moral
in character, such as choosing to do good works for others. The superstitious
may give alms to the poor, but the motivation is to win the favor of the gods,
not necessarily out of a sense of social or moral obligation. In paraphrase
of John F. Kennedy, the superstitious person asks not what he can do for the
gods, but what the gods can do for him. Such “worship” is nothing,
and presumably frivolous, if not practical in its intent. A good god is one
that delivers the goods, and therefore the attraction of Western religions
may not be whether they espouse a particular philosophy (although its eschatology
can be a factor), but its efficacy.
Sixth. Superstition must be questioned as a basis for explanation, or for
action from the point of view of responsibility. In a world of superstition
who is responsible for human actions and their consequences? Is one rich or
poor, sick or healthy, in love or not, this or that, because of the locations
of the planets at their birth, playing the right numbers, or avoiding the
wrong ones? What of the actions of others, of governments, of one’s
own choices and decisions? Is anyone responsible in a world run by unseen
authors of our fates? The result of these characteristics is that superstition
is that it is essentially fatalistic. In the world of the fatalist all conclusions
are foregone.
Finally, it seems to this rationalist that superstition might just drive one
mad. In the world of the superstitious everything has a potential significance,
every consequence has an antecedent cause, ranging from one’s birth
sign to geomantic circumstance. The world is alive and infested with gods
and demons who seem to take account of our every action and utterance. The
path through life is paved with metaphysical snares, numbers are everywhere,
and woe unto thee if your feng is blowing in the wrong direction over your
shui.
Like I said, I’m not the superstitious sort. But it is a presidential
election year, and there are f-f-f-fours in both the Chinese and Western calendars,
and what is particularly worrisome is that it’s
. . . the YEAR OF THE MONKEY!
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This piece was excerpted from James A. Clapp, "Crooked Bridges Over Troubled
Waters," The Wild East, August/September 2003, Issue
6&7. Posted: Thu - January 1, 2004