Volume 32

MAY 2006

32. 8: FINDING LESLIE HOPGOOD 5.31.2006

Over nearly 30 years of escorting various groups of Americans to thirty or so foreign countries I have had some unusual requests. Most of them I have been able to comply with (with the notable exception of that defrocked priest who wanted to sleep with me).

In an earlier travel memoir (No. 10.4, July 2004) I wrote of my fascination with cemeteries when I travel, of the way that different cultures deal with the ultimate trip (the one without a return ticket, unless you're a Buddhist or Shirley Maclaine). I have visited many cemeteries all over the world, often searching for the final resting places of people, good and bad, of renown, people I know only from their historical reputations. It's a curious way of getting “up close and personal,” I admit.

In 2001 I was giving a preliminary lecture to a group of Americans I was to escort through a three-week China trip when a woman in the group asked me if it might be possible to find the grave of her brother when we arrived to Hong Kong at the end of our tour. She was at least in her late sixties and had not seen her brother since the day he left their home in Eastern Canada in 1941. He was Leslie Hopgood, at the time a 19-year-old volunteer in the Royal Queen's Rifles.

Hong Kong had been invaded and conquered in the space of a few days just after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The British Crown Colony was expecting to be attacked, but was ill-equipped to fend off the powerful Japanese forces. Hong Kong is where Leslie Hopgood was headed with the rest of the Royal Queen's rifles.

I was to be in Hong Kong for some weeks before heading to Shanghai to meet my travel group, so there was a chance to see if I might locate his final resting place. I began with the Canadian Embassy, which, strangely, seemed to have no records of the locations of the servicemen in Hong Kong. It was the British Embassy, after being routed to several people, who directed me to a Jack Edwards and provided me with his phone number. I left a call with his secretary and was surprised when I got a call back from him in less than an hour.

“Did you say Hope good, or Hopgood?” he asked me. I could hear some pages being shuffled in the background. “Leslie?” you said?

“Yes, sir, Leslie Hopgood.”

“Right, I have him. Royal Rifles. Killed in action December 19, 1941. Can't have been here more than a few days before he went down,” Edwards added. “I think I could show almost the exact location where it happened. There's also a Sergeant Clayton, who would have served with him and lives in Canada. Could put you in touch with him.”

I was surprised by such accuracy of information, but told him that I was trying to locate his grave for Hopgood's sister, who would be in Hong Kong in a few weeks.

“Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery, Port 8, Row C, Grave 9 from the Left, go straight down the main aisle from the front of the cross,” Edwards instructed as though he knew the place by heart. He did, and seemed to know everything else about Hong Kong in WW II as I learned in the forty-minute phone conversation that ensued. For Edwards the war in Asia was no thing of the past; he spoke of it as though it had ended last week. He maintained an organization that kept just the kind of records he had just provided me with. He didn't want anybody to forget what had happened and was somewhat of a fixture around Hong Kong, especially on occasions when commemorative services were held.

In searching for Leslie Hopgood I ended up learning much more about Jack Edwards, a Welshman who served in Malaysia, where the British were also ill-prepared for the Japanese onslaught. Edwards ended up a POW of the Japanese, and he will never, ever, forget, or forgive what they did to him and his fellows. Captured in Singapore he eventually ended up in a POW camp in Taiwan where they were brutalized and forced to be slave labor in a copper mine. They were flogged, starved, tortured, ravaged by dysentery, and died by the hundreds. Edwards stayed in Asia after surviving the Japanese to continue the fight, this time to get the Japanese to own up to their brutality, and get the British to give the POWs and their families the benefits to which they were entitled. It's all recounted in his book, Bonzai, You Bastards! which he wrote forty years after the war. [1] It took years, but he was successful in getting the benefits awarded and was himself awarded and O.B.E. for his long service.

The war cemetery is at the east end of Hong Kong island, up in the hills above Chai Wan it slopes down toward the eastern entrance to Victoria Harbor. I went there before I would escort Hopgood's sister there a month later, to make sure I knew the way to his grave. As I looked down over the neat rows of headstones, many of them marked “A Soldier Known Only to God,” I had the thought that at least these men who has reposed in this well-kept cemetery for over sixty years had a nice view of the sea. It's silly, but it's very Chinese, very feng shui . It must be the reason there are so many cemeteries on these slopes. Was that any consolation to a guy who never made it to his twentieth birthday, who has been in this ground since I was a year old, and who will be here forever? Cemetery thoughts.

I was glad Leslie Hopgood, and the rest of these British fallen had Jack Edwards to look after them until he joins them. It gave me a good feeling to see his sister stand tearfully in front of his neatly-preserved resting place on that hillside in Hong Kong. Like me, and like Jack Edwards, I suspect that she takes some comfort in that this boy with such a tragically short life will always have a nice view of the sea.

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[1] Edwards told me during our phone conversation that he could have had his book published by a major publisher if he had been willing to change its title to something less provocative. He refused. As it happens there is a Japanese edition with the title Kutabare Jap Yaroh, which contains a “very rude expletive.”

32. 7: THE WAGES OF SIN 5.27.2006

Christ died on the cross for your sins. (Wow, even 1947 years before I was born, I'm thinking. How can that be!?) [1] This is the hook upon which the whole Christian success story hangs. Take it away and what have you got, some primitive old religion like Zoroastrianism. [2] Redemption was a brilliant idea and the church guy who thought that one up should get a free pass to heaven, or a night with Sophia Loren, which is even better. And pre-redemption ; that's even better. That's like saying “you don't pay any interest on this credit card balance for a whole year—then, you don't pay any interest on it for any years after the first year.” That would be a helluva way to run a bank, but it sure makes for a great religion. But I digress.

The Church wasn't always consistent (consistency not being one of their virtues). For example, it says that we are “born with the stain of ‘original sin' on our souls.” (Hey, what happened to that free pass from Christ's death on the cross!?) Hold on, you're missing the point; the operative word here is “Church,” and they need a way to get you signed up. Hence, original sin—It's the Original Sin, stupid! [3] You have to come in to get Baptized, to get rid of the original sin, [4] and then they've got you—you're a Roman Catholic and, once you're a Catholic, . . . well. So the Church has got you pretty much even before you know they've got you. If your parents are Catholic they sweat it out before you baptism because if you die un-baptized you end up in “limbo”. [5]

By now you're getting the idea that sin is pretty important for religions. Important!? It's like Ev-ery-thing, man! That's what people show up for, the redemption. They're afraid of dying with un-redeemed sins on their souls. You see, they really don't quite trust the pre-redemption thing; they think they have to go to church every Sunday, pray, put money in the second collection (for the missions to save pagan babies for ending up in “limbo”). The big secret they are never told is that they don't have to do this because they are “pre-redeemed.” Now it can be told.

I know this sounds like heresy (that's because it is heresy). I should know about heresy. At age twelve I became—I can hardly say it without feeling the hot breath of Lucifer on my immortal soul—a Monophysite. I lived the blasphemous life of a monophysitism for six sinful years. [6] All my Nestorian friends shunned me. Could I help it if some guy came by the schoolyard and gave me the writings of Eutyches, the Archimandrite in Constantinople in AD448? I was hooked? (Hope I'm not losing you here.)

And that's the way of it; the Church is hooked on sin. It needs it the way fish need water, the way Brad needs Angelina, the way Republicans need to screw poor people. In the final analysis any preacher, priest, Bible-thumper knows that without sin he is nothing. Sins, and we're not talking things like murder, genocide, lying about WMDs and such—but sins like adultery, boozing, blowing the rent at a casino, surfing porno sites, etc.—are the drama of being religious. Take the sin out of life and you take out the tension, the struggle, and a good deal of the fun, and the fire, brimstone and money out of religion. [7]

I think Christ knew this. I think he knew that there needs to be a little bit of drama and fun in life. But I don't think he went through being crucified by the Romans (and Mel Gibson) so creeps like Hitler, Milosivic, and Dick Cheney could get a free ride. I don't think he died on the cross so we could have television pray-boys, fat-assed bishops, and the rest of the hypocritical scumbags that feed off of the guilt they put in people's minds. Christ was a liberal rabbi who cared about the poor and the sick; if anything he died for them and probably because he cared about he little guys. He didn't die for Hitler's sins, or for your sins. And I don't want to believe that he died for my sins; I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

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[1] Gotcha wondering, huh. 1947. He wasn't born in 1947, you're thinking; he's trying to put one over on us. OK, this is really a little test, right here in this little footnote. The Church says you don't reach the “age of reason” until you are age seven. So, technically, you can't commit a mortal sin until then. That's why I waited until my seventh birthday, on which I went out had some drugs, stole a car, worshipped some false gods, got laid with my neighbor's wife, and killed a cop (let's see, did I miss anything?). Oh, year, and dishonored my mother and father. What the heck, these sins were pre-forgiven. Right? So, you got my age now?

[2] Which I think was started by some Mexican action hero who wore and black mask and was good with a sword. (But you might want to check some other sources.)

[3] The Church can get pretty complicated n this sin business. You might want to check out Archives No. 25.2 (on “mortal sin). By the way, the Protestant churches do the same thing. They just start put with telling you that you're a “sinner” (just before they have their hands in your wallet).

[4] You see, this sin is not “pre-redeemed” because it was put on your soul by the “sin of Adam and Eve” way before even Christ was born. Sol, as computer geeks would say, Christ's death on the cross is not “backward compatible.”

[5] Or at least that's where you used to go, before the Church axed the “limbo” thing after who knows how many centuries (see, I said they weren't consistent). Now I think they jus go to some place near some outlet stores in South Dakota and wait there for the “end time.”

[6] See Clapp, James A., I Was a Monophysite Heretic Until I was Saved by Jesuits , (Vatican Press, 1972). What? You thought I was going to tell you what a monophysite is? Get real; the book is only $17.95 ($217.95 for the autographed edition).

[7] The Church came up the Confession, even though sins were “pre-forgiven. I think Confession is really to keep Catholics from spending too much time on Saturdays at Wal-Mart, and priests from asking altar boys if they “want to go camping”?

32. 6: FASCISM CREEP 5.24.2006

While Red Staters are played like fish, baited with promises that America will one day be run with a Christian sharia , and hooked on the fear that terrorists will soon be building their mosques next to every Wal Mart that sells them the crap they're addicted to, the Bush administration slides the country further towards its goal of corporate fascism.*

All the elements, though not yet completely in place, are present, for the fascist state to come into being. The most important thing is the consolidation of power around the main centers. There is first of all the military. While in fascist state we have known the military can be used on its own citizens the capabilities for such have been exercised only rarely in America, to put down protests in Washington, and to kill students protesters at Kent State and now will be employed to protect our borders from illegal aliens bent upon committing acts of terror on our English language and our agricultural produce. But it's fed from the federal government with huge outlays for weapons systems and all sorts of internal propaganda that retains their fealty to the “commander–in-chief” who regularly appears before them and likes to dress up in their garb. Compliant ex-politicians and generals lobby on behalf of defense contractors, or sit on their boards and, with the collusion of bribe-taking congressmen like “Duke” Cunningham, form a fortress-like defense against most any complaint against waste and excess. High-ranking officers who do not fall into line with Pentagon policy are relieved of duty, forego promotions or are nudged into retirement. Troops are routinely used as a political weapon, but are scapegoated when their are abuses such as Abu Ghraib, or when the Secretary of State chooses to portray military failures as the result of “tactical” not “strategic” errors and failings. The “military-industrial complex,” so named by a former general and Republican president, is alive, well and prospering like never before.

The corporations comprise the second leg of the chair upon which fascism sits. Their allegiance is retained through generous tax arrangements, favorable treatment in the courts and protections against grievances by consumers, and a velvet glove when they are caught cheating (as in the savings and loan scandal and the Enron debacle), and progressive de-regulation of corporate behavior in everything from product safety to pension plan security. The complicity of the courts (have a look at Alito's rulings in disputes between workers or consumers and corporations), posing organized labor as bolshevism, and complicit legislators (e.g. Frist and Hastert engineering lawsuit protections for pharmaceutical companies). When CEO salaries and shareholder profits are the primary concern it does no matter when products are outsourced, particular when foreign markets for goods are expanding. Let the American consumer amass debt to acquire goods that they used to be paid for making themselves. But, of course, fascism requires that some of these profits be returned to the politicians that helped make them possible. Very much part of the corporate influence upon government has been the almost exponential growth of lobbies in number and penetration. The most egregious example of their mounting power has been the likes of super lobbyist Jack Abramoff. There has been surprisingly little outrage over the fact that the Vice President met secretly with the heads of energy corporations to fashion the administration's ludicrous energy policy, or the flagrant allowance of the pharmaceutical corporations to fashion a prescription drug policy that is clearly in their favor and is “enforced” by the inclusion of monetary penalties.

The control of information comprises a third leg of the seat of fascism. The agents of American fascism have made considerable inroads into the control of what the public knows and is allowed to know during the years of the Bush administration. Intimidation of the press as the establishment of the political left by continual reference to “media bias” has not been without result, virtually useless press conferences at the White House, the seeding of paid political “news” announcements that masquerade as journalistic reports. More recently, as the press has found some courage to begin questioning Republican policies and politicians the canard of “national security” concerns has been floated once more for the purposes of intimidation. Attorney General Gonzales recent reference to the use of the Patriot Act to perhaps prosecute reporters who “leak” classified information (this does not apply to the un prosecuted Robert Novak, who committed treason by outing CIA agent Valerie Plame), and the intimidation of three ABC reporters who have had their phone records acquired by the NSA. Of course without such “leaks” the American public would never have known of abuses such as Abu Ghraib, or lies such as about the death of soldier Pat Tillman.

The fourth leg of the chair of American fascism takes its cue from many South American authoritarian regimes, especially of the past—the complicity of putative “moral authority” of the people. This addition, primarily in the form of fundamentalist Christian churches and their “universities,” evangelistic organizations, and vast media system, has functioned as a ready voting bloc of “useful idiots,” as well as moral shock troops over issues such as abortion and gay marriage that serve to demonize and intimidate politicians. Evangelical fundamentalists also provide a ratification cohort for policies such as in Palestine, or, more broadly, military adventures against foes that have been characterized in such terms as “evil” and “godless.” There is, at the most general level, a kinship between religious authority and fascism in that they both rely heavily upon secrecy and, most especially, the use of fear.

Is this the textbook fascism as we have seen it in other countries, like Italy and Germany in the 30s and 40s? No, it need not be, and Americans would probably never suffer such political domination. But it is a creeping form of persistent semi-martial law, with all the threats, secrecy, suspension of civil rights. It is increasing control or intimidation of social institutions, the domination of the executive over other branches of government, and the threat that opposition to it will be called treason, aiding the enemy, and anti-American. Then there is increasing control over the “electoral process”. And, like classical fascistic systems it employs fear, fear to divide, fear intimidate, and fear of the “enemy” as the rationale for its arrogation of authority. The trump is that there is apparently no end point, offered by the administration, as to when the so-called “war on terror” will end; ergo the Patriot Act needs to never end, the NSA's powers to spy upon American citizens need never to be rescinded.

Ironically, it serves the purposes of Al Qaeda and the enemies of America to keep an increasingly fascistic administration in office. The Bush administration can, and has, dome more damage to America than dozens of airplanes flown into buildings. AQ has planted the fear, the Administration has seen the political advantage of using it to consolidate its power by dividing the nation, of spending itself into fiscal penury, and of paradoxically rescinding some of the very democratic freedoms it allegedly wishes to export to the rest of the world. It is the characteristic of fascistic systems that they are one-dimensional; they must increase their authoritarianism to retain their power and control. They must burn the village to save it. Unless the people decide not to be afraid.

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See also Archives No, 17.6: Slouching Towards Fascism

32. 5: MOUNT'N MEN 5.19.2006

Annie Proulx, who seems to love writing about people dealing with a lot of internal torment, let some of her own out when the movie based on her short story did not win the Academy Award for “Best Picture”. Proulx earned an SLB degree to put after her unpronounced “lx” for being a “Spoiled Literary Bitch” when she trashed Crash for being selected over Brokeback Mountain . C'est la cinema , Proulx.

My Netflix Brokeback Mountain arrived yesterday. I felt obliged, having written about its implications in an earlier essay, more than interested to watch it. Two cowboys go sheep-herding in the high pastures of Montana, and I couldn't keep a hilarious scene from Jim Jarmusch's Night of Earth , in which Roman taxi driver Roberto Benigni, confesses that he has fallen in love with a sheep to a priest in the back seat who is dying of heart failure (it's the sheepophilia, not the heart failure that is hilarious). Brokeback Mountain has received a lot of acclaim, but also has been the butt (see?) of a lot of jokes.

Angst Lee (sorry, couldn't resist it) received a “Best Director” award for his part; but I didn't see anything excdeptional in direction here (does this mean we might soon see Crouching Dragon Mounting Tiger?) . He may have a facility with getting two straight actors to play two gay cowboys who keep returning to the mountain to carry on their affair even after they have married and fathered children. Their phony “fishing trips” go on for years, but the only way we know that they must be getting older is that their kids are growing up. Jake Gyllenhaal (Jack) grows a mustache and gets a slight paunch. Heath Ledger (Ennis), who was nominated for a “Best Actor” award only seems to “age” by becoming more inaudible as the movie goes on. He starts out mumbling his dialog, presumably to give him an aw-shucks taciturn cowboy demeanor. By the end he looks like a guy practicing ventriloquism; he barley moves his lips and his words are indecipherable, and there were precious few lines of dialog for him to deliver. (The Academy Award went to a guy playing a gay who sounded like Daffy Duck.)

Neither of these cowboys is particularly likeable or depthful, but then they don't appear to like themselves either. They seem mainly interested in rolling around together in meadows and bemoaning that they have wives and families that keep them apart. Right-wingers will get a double whammy from this film: guys living in homosexual debauchery and wrecking their families into the bargain. (See, homosexuals are making war on the American family.)

Still there is something moving and meaningful going on is this film. There is lust, and maybe love, or maybe just the need for friendship with someone who “understands” what is so difficult to understand. It's hard to parse out, even for the two cowboys. It is a romantic film in the sense that they respectively and reciprocally are ready to risk everything for something not that they have, but has them . Homophobes won't care to see it that way; they like seeing this stuff as a chosen (sinful) “lifestyle” for which these guys will burn in hell.

They pay a bigger price than that. Ennis moans that every look he gets, even from strangers, seems to be a “knowing” look. Wives are even harder to deceive, and they are played with appropriate nuance by Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams. We know that they know, without ever saying so.

So will they ride off into the sunset over Brokeback Mountain , or not? It is the 1980s near the denouement of their two-decade affair, but neither seems to be inclined to decamp for the anonymity and more favorable social setting of San Francisco or New York, preferring to fantasize about setting up a ranch together somewhere. But then Ennis has that recurring flashback of when his father made him look at the bodies of two old gay cowboys that were beaten to death and dumped in a ditch. They're stuck, and starting to take things out on one another when one another is getting to be about all they have left.

I think that's where Brokeback Mountain got its appeal. If it were only a “gay film,” or a film that appealed to what right-wingers would see as a homage to “those Hollywood fags and liberals,” or only a film with two A-list male actors kissing on screen, I don't think it would have amounted to much. But, in the end, these two icons of American rugged individuality can only be what they are, or at least what they feel, in the outback of Brokeback Mountain. Homophobes may hate the film for impugning a sacred American myth, but if they bother to see it, they might also realize that it is about two, scared, trapped people.

Perhaps the best scene is when Ennis visits Jack's parents after the latter's death. By now we are wondering whether the parents “know,” too. There is a palpable sense of personal desolation in Ennis' visit to Jack's room, as well as the sense that this is where Ledger earned his nomination, and Ang Lee has earned his “Angst.” By this time I had even put down that magazine I was using to flip through during those scenes of two guys kissing.

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XXXII. IV: THE de FICHEY CODE

A story by James A. Clapp

1 2 5 2

Anno Domini

During the Eighth Crusade, under the leadership of France's beloved Louis IX, the coastal city of Acre in Palestine had been under Christian siege for more than two years. The French were becoming dispirited. Another Summer had come and the Gallic knights were roasting in their armor under the merciless sun and torrid mistral. Their ammunition was as low as their morale. They were close to calling a cessation to the crusade and cede the city to the Infidel.

One evening, after yet another day of fruitless sweaty effort, one of the French knights, Sir Guy-Phillippe de Fichey, was walking along the shore of the Mediterranean dreaming of his faraway home in Fichey-sur-Loire, when he came upon the carcass of a very large fish. The putrefaction of the fish fouled the air for hundreds of meters in every direction. It was all the knight could do to keep down his meager ration of paté de fois gras and andouilles de Provence avec sauce Mousseline , washed down with a Côtes de Rhone of exceptional vintage, followed by . . . well, we haven't got all day. . .

But the knight, Sir Guy, was not so distracted by the rotting fish to hatch a plan. By next day he had convinced the King of the worthiness of his plan, a plan that just might give the city, and honor, back to the men of the Cross. And so, gasping and gagging the Christian knights mashed the flesh and of the dead fish into a paté offensive to the nose and repugnant to the eye, and rolled the it into balls the size of apples. In the blazing sun these were loaded on their catapults launched their boules de poisson over the walls of the Infidel city to fester in the streets and suffuse their homes with horrible stench.

The French knights anticipated that the Infidel would not be able to hold out under such intolerable conditions for more than a few days. But as it happened the French had made a terrible military miscalculation, one to rival Agincourt and Waterloo. The French Crusaders did not know that the Infidel, their own food supply exhausted, were themselves on the edge of surrender when the rotting fish balls rained over their walls. Having already consumed rats, insects, and old shoes the taste buds and gastro-intestinal systems of the Infidel had survived sufficient assault to risk ingestion of putrid poisson.

Fortified with this rich, if most unsavory, windfall of protein the Infidel counterattacked, spilling from the gates of Acre, and with new strength and bad breath, they drove the surprised French knights into the sea. That night the remaining French knights dragged themselves ashore to be captured for ransom. But Sir Guy, fearful that the King would want his head for leading him into this blunder, clung to a piece of driftwood for two days. Rescued by a fishing boat he made the long way back to Europe in defeat and disgrace.

In the months it took him to reach his beloved France Sir Guy had thought often of his miscalculation. He came to the conclusion that, if the fish balls and allowed the Infidel to fight with such fury, the same fishballs might be used to fortify a force that would restore honor to the French Crusaders. He clutched this hope as tightly as he clutched beneath his tunic a clay jar containing six of the fisballs floating in briny water.

But here our story, taken from the memories of Sir Guy, becomes clouded. For, in passing through the city of Beaune, Sir Guy fell ill with a plague that was scourging these lands. The order of nurse nuns who tended the sick at the Hotel-Dieu found the knight delirious and near death in the gutter, clutching his jar beneath his ragged clothes. For days he lapsed in and out of consciousness.

All the while the fish balls remained in the clay jar beneath his sickbed, not far from his chamber pot. One day a new nurse mistook the one for the other. When she opened the jar of fish balls she gasped “this man must be very ill indeed!” Only when another nurse noticed and told her that the jar was the Sir Guy's only possession did she replace them beneath his sickbed. Thus the story of the fishballs nearly ended in a toilet in the hospital at Beaune.

Sir Guy knew none of this, his mind being blurred with fever and delirium. And it was during his fevers that he had a recurring dream. In the dream a beautiful young woman in white appeared to him. At each appearance she would implore him: “Guy, Guy, you must not use the balls of fish as implements of warfare. Long ago I used to make the balls of fish for my son, whose fishermen friends would bring him fish from the Sea of Galilee. He and his friends ate the balls of fish with great relish. Except one, a vegetarian, named Judas. My son who was a teacher and a man of peace often said that if he knew which supper would be his last he would order the balls of fish to savor with his friends. I will spare your life, Guy, if you will give your balls of fish to a man of good will.”

“How will I know such a man?” murmured Guy in his delirium.

“You will know,” the beautiful Lady said, “you will know.” And she receded into the mists of his mind.

Some weeks later Sir Guy, en route to Paris, was passing through the town of Joigney. In his tunic he cradled the jar of fish balls, uncertain of what fate was in store for him, or the boules de poisson .

The moment of reckoning presented itself to Sir Guy as he was about to enter a tavern. Suddenly, sprawled at his feet was a young man who had been thrown from the tavern by its burley proprietor. "Voleur! Thief!" he roared at the prone young man. "You have insulted me, you have insulted my patrons, you have insulted France, but most of all you have insulted Bacchus!" And with that he kicked the young man in the backside, driving his face into the mud. "Take that, Monsieur Daveeed!" he shouted sarcastically.

"Are you injured?" inquired Sir Guy, reaching down to assist the young man.

"Mostly my pride, sir," he replied sheepishly. He seemed a kindly, pleasant appearing young man to Sir Guy, although his nose seemed somewhat large for his face.

"I am a knight of the Eigth Crusade," said Sir Guy. "You are a little man. If you wish I will restore your honor by beating that tavern-keeper within an inch of his life!"

"Oh, please do not harm him sir," implored the young man, "there has been enough violence."

Sir Guy was touched by the young man's pacifism. And he was also reminded of the lady in white and her admonition. Noticing that the young man was very thin he offered him the only food he possessed, one of the boules de poisson . He could scarcely believe it when the young man wolfed it down and asked for a second one. Could it be the sign the lady in white told him to seek?

They spent the day together. Sir Guy told the young man of his adventures on crusade, and he was surprised to learn that the young man wished to go to the Holy Land himself. He told Sir Guy that he was a Hebrew and that his people had roamed Europe since the Roman conquest of Jerusalem. His family were vintners, but he was the only one left. To his misfortune he could not even give away his wine; everybody hated it, particularly the French; trop doux they complained. "That is why the tavern-keeper abused me, because of my wine," he said sadly. "If only I could return to the land of my people, perhaps they would buy my wine."

That night, as they prepared to sleep in the fields, the young man asked if he could have another boule de poisson. "I can only offer you a drink of my wine in return," he said sheepishly, pulling his last bottle out of his sack. Sir Guy gave him the fishball and reached for the wine. He lifted the bottle and swallowed a mouthful. He gagged and winced, and wheezed to the young man: "Jesus! This stuff sucks!" He went to sleep and dreamed again of the lady in white.

In the morning he gave the young man another fish ball, but gently declined his offer of wine. Then he said: "We must part now, but I believe that you are a man of good will. I wish you good journey to the Holy Land, please take these remaining two fish balls to sustain you on your way."

The young man had tears in his eyes, and not because Sir Guy declined to accept the bottle of wine as a return gift. "You are an noble man, Sir Knight, may your God bless and keep you," he said choking back the tears.

"And yours, you," said the knight.

They had only separated by a hundred paces when Sir Guy turned at called back to the young man: "Young man, I do not even know your name, may I know it to better remember you?"

"I am Mogen, David Mogen, Sir," he called back.

"Mogen, David Mogen. Mogen, David Mogen," Sir Guy mumbled to himself, "odd name, Mogen David Mogen."

Then the young man called back: "Sir Knight, may I also have the honor to know your name that it may be spoken with respect throughout my homeland?" And for the first time since the defeat and disgrace at Acre Sir Guy told someone his full name. With newfound pride he called back, " Je m'appelle Sir Guy-Phillipe de Fichey."

But the distance between them and the rustling of the trees obscured the knight's name. The young man did his best to remember how to pronounce it, and so he would begin and end each day with the prayer: “Oh Lord of us all, bless and keep our land and its people, and please bless and keep Guy-filtefishe.”

1 9 6 7

Anno Domini

On June 13, The Jerusalem Post reported that for two weeks prior to their victorious Six Day War the Israeli Armed Forces were reputedly fed a diet exclusively of gefilte fish. Deputy Minister of Defense Dov Mogen was asked to confirm the report, but said the matter was “classified”.

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This story was originally titled “The Legend of Guy-Phillippe de Fichey” and was written for the birthday of a friend of the faith of Abraham. Despite the fact that I had for many years kidded my dear departed friend, Denis Sanders, about “gefilte burgers” and “Gefilte a l'Orange,” or my favorite, “Gefilte with Truffles and White Chocolate Sauce.”

32. 3: ANNA MAY WONG , by Graham Russell Gao Hodges [BR] 5.11.2006

Before she died of a heart attack in 1961 Anna May Wong had “died a thousand deaths” on screen. As America's first Asian lady of the movies, Wong was typecast as the “dragon lady,” the femme fatale of the East and other racist stereotypes of Asians who, for decades, were relegated to minor roles and “atmosphere” from the days of silent movies. Prevented from leading roles by de facto racist attitudes, and from even kissing a Caucasian on screen by “ de jure” equivalents, she persisted against conditions that might have sent a lesser person back to being a delivery girl for her father's Chinese laundry in Los Angeles. But Anna May dutifully let herself be dispatched, or committed suicide, so that something could be done with the Asian “alien” character that American movie audiences couldn't quite fit into the picture.

Asian parts seem to have been cast as though the Asian personality was regarded as so stereotypically “inscrutable” that Western audiences would be unable to apprehend the subtleties of a performance by a real Chinese in the role of a Chinese. Hence the series of over forty Charlie Chan films (from 1926 to 1949) in which the titular lead was played in “yellowface” by either a Scandanavian-born or American actor. Only the role of Charlie's “Number One Son,” was played by Canton-born Keye Luke, although he is thoroughly “americanized”. Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (1937) featured Westerners Paul Muni and Luise Rainer as Chinese in the lead roles. Then, of course there was the ultimate absurdity of John Wayne squinting his way through the The Conquerer (1956) failing to convince anyone that he was a credible Ghengis Khan while striding around Mongolia (actually Utah) in his unmistakable gait as though he were on his way to a cattle round-up in a John Ford classic. Producers still seem to rely on the American moviegoer's confusion over Asians. Major feature films such as The Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha are able to cast, for example, Japanese as Chinese and vice versa, without any consequence to suspended disbelief.

Born right in LA, Anna May started out in silent films—with a role in Toll of the Sea (1922) when she was just seventeen—and made the transition to sound pictures with ease, probably because she had such small speaking parts, but also because she had a softy, sultry voice when called upon. Although she was under contract to Paramount the studio exploited her, paying her much less than they paid Caucasian actors for equivalent work. She supplemented with modeling work thanks to her exotic beauty and slim, shapely figure, from which she contributed to the educations of her several brothers and sister (including one son from her father's Chinese wife who still lived back in Taishan in southern China). Anna May was the only one not to earn a university degree. Not that Anna May was without intellectual interests ort abilities. She read widely, counted artists, writers among her lifelong friends and acquaintances, and, when she boldly took herself to Europe in search of better roles, and acquired fluency in German and French. She became a bigger star there than in her home country.

Ironically, Anna May never seemed to be able to gain acceptance in China where her roles, as servants or Dragon ladies, were regarded as an insult to the Chinese culture. In part, the homeland Chinese disaffection for her work also owes something to the general low regard the Chinese have for “overseas” Chinese. Amazingly, Anna May was able to fashion a film career between the Scylla of Western discrimination, and Charybdis of Eastern opprobrium without going under. What may have sustained her was the respect and friendship she received from fellow actors, like Paul Robson, and cinematographer-director, James Wong Howe. She also formed friendships among intellectuals in America and Europe.

But the insults of negative stereotyping continued to haunt her films. In Shanghai Express (1932) Marlene Dietrich plays a call girl, but Wong (Hui Fei, the last name meaning a prostitute or concubine in Chinese) is cast more darkly, as a sullen and sultry “dragon lady” who is raped by a war lord. but eventually turns out to be the heroine of the film. She turns out to be the heroine, stabbing the warlord, Chang (played by non-Asian Warner Oland) and allowing all to escape his clutches. But the story quickly reverts to the love relationship between Dietrich and her male co-star. She actually had the lead role Bombs Over Burma (1943), a role that required she make love to a Japanese officer (Wong hated the Japanese and what they were doing to China) to save the people of her village. She kills the officer, but is herself executed.

Given a chance to give some non-stereotypical shape to a role Wong proved to be a facile and naturalistic actress. She was graceful in here movements and gestures, had a velvety voice, and could be expressive well-beyond the impassive inscrutability required of most of the characters she played. Still, most people don't remember her, or know of her as Hollywood's first Asian actress who blazed the through prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes to pave the way for Joan Chen, Nancy Kwan, France Nuyen, and Lucy Liu, and other Asian sisters.

Wong never married. She had several lovers, all of them Caucasian, at least one for whom she was “the other woman,” which never seemed to lead toward marriage or evolved into friendships. In that sense she seems well within the “tradition” of film and literature's failed love affairs between Asians and westerners. However, she kept many friends, of different races and nationalities, for life. How much of that owes to her personality, or the fact that she was so unique and rare in her profession. What is clear is that at the personal level there was far more depth and dimension to her than was ever allowed to be expressed in her film roles. Her place in film history is a bit like many of the roles she played; she was the inscrutable Asian, often in the shadowland between East and West.

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32. 2: HU's ON FIRST 5.5.2006

© 2001, James A. Clapp

It didn't seems to matter much to George Bush, or to American's in general, that the president's insistence on giving China's president Mr. Hu Jintao a “luncheon” rather than a state dinner was an insult to Mr. Hu and the Chinese people. Such details can matter greatly in interactions with Asians, and such gaffs as referring to China as the “Republic” of China rather than “the People's Republic of China, and the incident of the heckler during Mr. Hu's White House speech, have even been edited out of official news reports back in the PRC. When their leader loses “face,” the people lose face as well.

The Chinese take “face” to levels of meaning and expression that we Westerners can barely fathom. As an expression of personal honor, “face” can be a complex and frequently perilous trap for the Occidental tourist. Face ranges from the peasant's last refuge of personal dignity, to the wealthy businessman's demand for “respect” in the most hard-nosed negotiation. Causing a Chinese to “lose face” can lose the offender anything from your place in line to losing your life.

As with many other things, the Chinese have also made a quasi-science of the physical “face”. “Face reading” is employed as the visage equivalent of graphoanalysis to “read” one's character, personality and emotional states. That Asians often seem more adept at concealing their own emotions behind cool facial expressions forms the basis, of course, for their fabled “inscrutability”.

And from a directly aesthetic perspective. the Chinese, as one might find among most racial and ethnic groups, tend to see the most appealing physical features through somewhat ethnically-narcissistic lenses. More than a few Occidentals have been dismayed to learn that Asians are not necessarily envious of our oversized, and often overstuffed, bodies, and, of course, our more prominent noses.

Westerners may have their own, if less obsessive, versions of “face,” but we are far less adept at keeping our emotions well-concealed behind them. Once can only wonder what they make of George Bush's smirking chimp face. But Bush isn't the first, and won't be the last, Westerner, to stumble over the complex and pervasive concerns about face in the Orient.

It was only a few years after the events of 1989 that I, and a few members of the tour on which I was escorting professor, were boarding our coach on our first day. Our China International Travel Service guide introduced herself and then said: “Our driver for this part of the tour does not speak English, but you can say “nihao” to him, which means “hello”. His name is Mister Hu.” She said something to him in Mandarin, and Mr. Hu turned in his driver's seat and gave a quick, shy wave.

Rhonda, a thirty-some social worker from Brooklyn, and her mother were sitting behind me. We were midway down the coach. I would learn throughout the tour that Rhonda's quick and “Brooklynese” sense of humor did not always square well with Chinese concerns about “face.” She leaned forward a few inches from my ear.

“Who is he, did she say?” she asked sotto voce .

“Hu.” I whispered, half-turning my head.

“That's what I asked you, WHO?” she whispered more forcefully.

“Hu's the driver.” I repeated

“That's what I want to know. . .”

“MR. HU is the DRIVER!” her mother interjected loudly enough that I could see Mr. Hu's head lift slightly.

In a flash those within earshot of this exchange were covering their faces and stifling laughs, terrified at giving insult to our hosts within minutes of first meeting them. We managed to get ourselves under control, and being careful not to give offense for the next several days that Mr. Hu was our driver we took care that he was out of hearing range of what became an irresistible impulse to play with the linguistic confusion.

“Who's going to be driving today?”

“Hu.”

“OK, so tell me, who's driving!”

and,

“Does anybody know which direction we're traveling in?”

“Hu knows.”

“Well somebody must know. . .!”

“Hu cares, anyway!”

and, to the Mickey Mouse Club song, “Hu's the leader of us all, da-da, da-da, da-da . . .”

and,

“Just Hu the hell does he think he is, the driver?”

and, inevitably,

“Hu's on First.” Etc.

Later, when Sung, our guide asked me what I thought of Mr. Hu's driving I took it as her suspicion that we might not have been satisfied with him. But perhaps she had overheard our joking and laughing in spite of the care we took.

Sung's English was quite good; but her sense of humor was Beijingese, not Brooklynese. So I thought I would come clean and try to explain that we Westerners meant no disrespect if she happened to hear something that doesn't translate cross-culturally. She was going to be with us the whole way, so it seemed worthwhile to get this understood early; after all, I was the escorting professor and I didn't want to lose “face” with her.

It took nearly an hour to explain the classic comedy routine “Who's On First” to Sung because I had to explain baseball first, then who Abbott and Costello were. I think she grasped the main points, but she could only manage a polite, weak smile. Maybe I don't do a decent Abbot and Costello. Maybe it was that I was seen by her as a “professor” and the Chinese don't laugh at what professors have to say. OK, at least I tried.

Then, when we got to Shanghai, we got a new bus driver. Mr. Hao.

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32. 1: MRS. JACOBS' NEIGHBORHOOD 5.2.2006

Photo credit: Maggie Steber, Planning Magazine , September 1986

“And this year's recipient of ‘The Janey' is -------------.”

Many years ago, when I directed the Masters Program in City Planning at SDSU, I instituted an award that was bestowed upon one of the graduating students at our annual banquet. “The Janey,” a large, framed photograph of writer-activist-urbanist Jane Jacobs, was somewhat tongue-in-cheek (the reason the awardee received it was never disclosed, so they could supply their own accolade). But like the real Janey, they were “exceptional” in some way and showed promise to make a mark on their chosen field. Jacobs was revered by some students, a foil for others, but respected by all. She was rather unique, a street level battler for the urban neighborhood who took on the likes of New York City's Robert Moses and prevailed in keeping him from slicing an expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village.

Jacobs wrote the second book I purchased when I first became interested in urban planning. The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) was probably the first book of its sort to make the New York Times bestseller list. It was critical of the prevailing approaches to city planning and urban redevelopment, and explicated Mrs. Jacob's ideas about what made lively, functioning neighborhoods and cities. She was an activist, but a theorist at her core. She was hard to resist.

The first book I bought was Lewis Mumford's The City in History , a classic in its own right. The two books didn't reside comfortably beside one another on my shelf. While both author's were celebrants of urban life they seemed to come at it from different ends of the telescope. Jacobs' view was street level. She saw the vitality of the city in the fundamental interaction between urbanites and the streets and sidewalks. Where planners tended to see chaos and clutter she saw an urbanscape articulated with traces and subtle functions of urban living. To Mumford's dismay, she maintained that it was the very crowdedness of the city that made them safer—the “eyes of the city” as she put it.

Such notions were “Mother Jacob's Home Remedies . . . “ as Mumford put it in an article. Where Jacobs was molecular, the renowned social historian was molar. Mumford had come from a “regionalist” perspective, honed on utopian socialists like England's Sir Ebenezer Howard and social ecologist Sir Patrick Geddes. He championed the building of entirely new towns that might avoid repeating the mistakes of gigantic urbanism. [1]

But this is a remembrance of Mrs. Jacobs, not of her critic. [2] She came along at the right time, a countervailing force in a cloth coat, sensible shoes and her Prince Val cut who forced planners to consider the subtle, fine grain of urban life that is constructed out of loyalty to place, experience, memory, association, and all the other elements that make a place a place, a neighborhood and a community. Planners were in their salad days when she wrote Death and Life; they had their renewal legislation from the Housing Act of 1949, public housing, the interstate highway program, and an array of new programs from JFK's “Great Society” and they were having at cities sometimes with the abandon of kids kicking over ant hills.

Her appeal was that she viewed the city like a flaneur , at the same eye level as the average urbanite, not from 35,000 feet, which was a common map scale for large cities. Things look different up close (and personal). Her approach was inductive; she started with the individual, and the web of local connections, working her way up. The idea that working deductively, from some abstract design concept to be downwardly imposed upon the character of indigenous communities led, in her view, to a stultifying urbanism. Where planners depicted abstracted people plying mall-like open spaces, Jacobs saw tight streets, stores with merchandize spilling onto sidewalks, and people chatting on stoops.

Yet not every district of a city with older streets and buildings was a viable, dynamic, and quaint neighborhood like the Greenwich Village and Boston North End, or parts of Toronto to which Jacobs eventually decamped. Some possessed neither the location and loyal residents, nor the commercial and social viability, although planners, as Herbert Gans [3] pointed out, often could not see the life in them because of the dereliction and land use clutter.

But sometimes you have to get up a little higher and see what's going on at a larger scale. The neighborhood may be the mosaic tile of the urban pattern, but its relationship to the connective infrastructure. Cities needed to respect their indigenous “villages,” but they existed, and their very character depended upon. an encompassing and expanding metropolitanism.

Not that Jacobs ignored the more theoretical aspects of urbanism, but she tended to explain them to her readers in ways that seemed to reflect her almost colloquial examples and metaphors. In her The Economy of Cities (1970), she characteristically took on the establishment, reversing the anthropological theory that cities emerges only after the development of agriculture. She explained how urban economies expand and prosper by making “new work” with the example of the woman who conceived of the brassiere.

In the final analysis, Jacobs was not the bane of planners. Many respected her, other came around to her way of thinking, and some, like neo-traditionalists, bastardized her ideas. But it was not Jacobs who vanquished the planners; it was the urban riots of the 1960s, Vietnam, the dismantling of urban programs by the Nixon Administration, the recessions of the seventies, the emerging political conservatism and its anti-urbanism. In the final analysis, planners would be fools not to claim her as one of their own, a tough-minded conscience who made them re-think their concepts and learn to love what makes cities vibrant when they became detached, and lost in their bureaucratic and dogmatic ways.

She was special, the genuine article, like the parts of cities she loved and fought for. I guess if I was still handing out “Janeys” I would have to say that this year's recipient of “The Janey” is . . . who else, . . . Janey.

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[1] Mumford lived his later years in the small town of Amenia, New York, with a population less than 5000.

[2] I covered Mumford's passing some years ago, remembering a personal “encounter” with him as well.

[3] Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1962 )