DCJNovember2003

Volume 2
NOVEMBER 2003

2.7: Are You Terrorized Yet?

It has been over two years now since 9-11 and while I still marvel at the event that has etched that date in our collective consciousness I still wonder whether I am, as I believe was the intent of that heinous act, “terrorized.”

I look out from my deck which overlooks San Diego harbor, home to some US aircraft carriers, nuclear subs, and assorted other military hardware and now I wonder how easy to would be to bring a container ship in (in which scarcely two percent of containers are inspected), detonate a nuclear device amidst the nuclear-powered Navy fleet.

I watched as fires consumed hundreds of thousands of acres of land and thousands of buildings in a few days, presumably set off by a single stupid act, and wonder how easy it would be to repeat it with a few well-placed acts of terrorist arson.

When I see how helpless we become at a simple power outage when we are deprived of communication and transportation by some mishap that turns out to be so simple, I wonder at how vulnerable we our with our dependence on technology.

Is this what it means to be “terrorized”? When I drive past the nuclear power plant at San Onofre and think such thoughts, or over the California aqueduct and imagine how easy it would be for someone to drop some horrible, deadly chemical or bio-agent into it, is that what Osama wants me to be thinking about?

Is that how I should be thinking? Should I be on “orange” level alert all the time, checking to see if there are any suspicious characters while the airport authorities are checking my shoes and confiscating my nail clippers. (How many nail clippers have they confiscated? Did it occur to them that now terrorists might decide to claw flight crews into submission with their lethally long, unclipped nails?)

Well, by now anyone might conclude that I am indeed terrorized. Which I guess is normal under the circumstances. It’s what one does with being terrorized that matters. I have little personal power to do much other than be alert and not compromise what we now call “homeland security.” I don’t mean stupid like putting a couple of those window flagpoles on our SUVs and roaring around yelling how proud we are to be Americans.

Maybe what doesn’t kill you makes you more alert, if it doesn’t make you stronger. That must have been Al Qaeda’s point. To let us know that we’re vulnerable, that we’re not really safe and secure anywhere.

But I think there might be more to it than that. Maybe Osama thinks that the real effectiveness of terrorizing us is that he won’t have to do all that much and we will start acting irrationally, making stupid decisions, flailing about with ham-handed preemptive wars so that we will do as much, or more, damage to ourselves by alienating allies and making new terrorists.

Then again, reflecting back on what wrote in 1995 we might have even more to worry about than Osama bin Laden.

Toklahoma City

"Men come together in cities for safety; they stay together for the good life."
Aristotle (Athens, 4th C. B.C.)

"I don't feel safe anywhere anymore."
Anon. Woman (Oklahoma City, 4/19/95)

"Sister cities" are usually established by chamber of commerce types looking for deals and excuses for junkets. History goes about it differently, and often with irony. That Tokyo and Oklahoma City should become joined together at the hip by the sinews of urban terrorism is something perhaps only the convulsive effects of Sarin gas or the concussive impact of a truck-sized bomb could have brought to consideration.

But there is perhaps more than the datelines of April 1995 upon which to construct parallels between these two very different cities in very different cultures. It is odd that the instruments of terror were household chemicals with which we can do our windows and laundry, or do away with scores of innocent people; or, that chemicals to fertilize crops and fuel tractors and combines can be combined to blast craters in out of the centers of cities. "Better dying through chemistry": deadly concoctions that can be served up with noodles or mashed potatoes.

Then there is the grim apocalyptic visions of the subcultures from which the perpetrators have emerged: one a bizarre concoction as deadly as Sarin of religious zealotry and hatred of the secular order; the other emerging from and explosive blend of gun-love, fanciful fears of big-brother government, and death by taxation or Koresh-like martyrdom. Both exhibit paranoia and persecution complexes, and both claim to act out of defense against big, bad government.

And despite the fact that both these cities are in the two most powerful economies in the world, and both market-driven democracies, there are similar problems at the mico level. Perhaps the counterpart of America's angry white male feeding his fears on the strident harangues of reactionary politics, or playing let's-defend-our-right-to-bear-arms on the weekend, is the pressure-cooked Japanese salaryman (or wannabe) struggling with the political corruption or corrupting capitalism, turning to a religious smorgasbord of ersatz spirituality filling the vacuum of lost emperor worship or traditional religions of less that modern pace.

There is, moreover, a discernable anti-urban tinge to the current waves of urban terror in Japan and America. Though the perpetrators and their methodology may surprise us, the ingredients are familiar ones. Not the least of them is, of course, religious fundamentalism. From biblical times church and state have been uneasy sharing the same ground. Today the call to smote the secular City of Man with the scared sword comes from pulpit and minaret and aum.

Just as hateful to the deliverers of urban terror is that cities are places where we must regulate our lives and behavior if there is to be any social order, where we must tax ourselves if we are to have the safety, security and services that urban life affords; it is where we must show tolerance toward those of different creed, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and social philosophy. These are not just desiderata, they are the essentials of urban life. They have not produced the heavenly city on earth, and never will; but, for most of us they are far, far preferable than the alternatives of practicing for Armageddon in the woods in camouflage, holing up with bibles and bazookas in a compound outside Waco, or mixing up Sarin cocktails in a religious retreat on Mt Fugi.

Cities were, of course, relatively safe places to be in Aristotle's time. Their safety was in their walls, and the willingness of their citizens to defend them against the terrorists of the time. The real mortar in city walls was in the sense of common enterprise and destiny that its citizens could maintain. But if the only mucilage binding people together are common paranoia and intolerance, they will, sooner or later, tear themselves and their city down.

Aristotle's teacher, Plato felt that the city should be not larger in citizens that they could not all be assembled within earshot of a political speaker. One wonders whether Plato would have thought had he been within earshot of a congressman from Oklahoma City, who wondered aloud for the media at the time the perpetrators were still alleged to have been "foreigners" as to why terrorists would choose a city in "America's heartland." He opined that he could understand it if the bomb had been detonated in New York, or Los Angeles; but he felt that this time the terrorists must have intended to strike a blow "at real Americans." *

Like negative voting, fear is a stronger motivator to political action than contentment. But it is far less often that big business is blamed for devouring the worker and the small businessman, than government is held accountable because it levies taxes and regulations. One supposes that, in the twisted Orwellian logic of terrorists, if government stopped taxing them to pay for the salaries and services of the police, fire and rescue workers, and other government officials, there would be no need to commit acts of terror that make them necessary.

*He would be well-advised not to repeat this in New York City after 9-11
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: © James A. Clapp, Ph.D., San Diego American Planning Association Journal, May 1995
Posted: Tue - November 25, 2003

2.6: Liver and Onions: A Conspiracy

I hate liver and onions. Why I decided to order it in the dispenser of dysentery I sometimes ate at when I was in grad school in Syracuse has long escaped me (I think it's because the onions grilling masked the aroma of the liver.) I vowed that day never to eat another internal organ, with or without onions, if I could help it, not knowing then some of the places I would later be traveling to.

Why bring up liver and onions (I mean in literally, not regurgatively, which is the usual way)? Because I think about it every November around this date, as I have for that past forty years. Everybody seems to remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard JFK had been shot. I was at a greasy lunch counter trying to force down liver and onions. It was just me and the 350 lb. short order cook listening to the radio in disbelief.

The only good thing that could be said of the moment was that it provided an excuse to plop down a tip and leave that plate of "L & O" sitting there barely touched without offending the chef. I left without a word.

Not a very auspicious answer to the perennial "Where were you when JKF was shot?" Unless, of course, one of these days that liver and onions figures into some conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination, something I don't consider all that far-fetched. After all, JFK's death has become as much an "industry: as an historical event that shook this country out of an "innocence" to which it will never return. And the central product of that industry has been conspiracy.

Much has been made of the give and take of the conspiracy theorists that need not be reviewed here except for a few points, the first being that the ultimate conspiracy theory might be that JKF was shot for no other reason that to plunge the nation into endless speculation about the event, ending in an mutually assured armageddon among the contending camps. By now everyone knows, painfully, the theories about Oswald's connections with the USSR and Cuba, the notions that Castro, the American mafia, the French mafia, the CIA, the FBI, and lately Lyndon Johnson, and assorted lesser figures have all been implicated in varying degrees of culpability with bullets that have been flying from every possible direction, from grassy knolls and book depositories. The spinners of such plots have been a legion that includes Oliver Stone (who must be blamed for ensnaring a whole generation that weren't even born when there was black and white TV), and thanks to "dramatic recreations," "reality" TV, Roswell, the X Files, the Loch Ness monster and the demise of Princess Diana, produced the most credulous generation since Nostradamus was in short pants.

With such an array of reality-bending devices, rampant attention deficit syndrome, and complicitous TV programming execs, an army of conspiracy spinners (why do these people always seem to have nervous ticks and wandering eyes and would make a polygraph look like it was in the midst of an 8.0 on the Richter?) have had a field day playing "here's a bunch of dots, let's see how we can connect them to make a conspiracy." That's how thousands of mystery and thriller novels are written every year. And that's my point: at any time there are innumerable potential intersections between major current events and personal circumstances that could be connected in some way with a catalytic event and suspicious minds.

Really?

Yeah, really.

Consider this. I didn't give you the full story on the liver and onions. That greasy spoon was recommended by a guy who also rented a room in the house where I rented. I'll call him "Ted" for reasons that are related to my own safety. Ted was a butcher at the market a couple of doors down from the greasy spoon. He had tattoos on his forearms that I could never get a good look at, a salt and pepper brush cut, a ruddy complexion, and told me that he hired a whore every Friday night and got drunk every Saturday night. Then there is this, he had told me one time as we we both watching the news on our landlady's TV, that he had shook JFK's hand when Jack was campaigning in Syracuse, that he had stepped into the street when the motorcade went slowly by and grasped Kennedy's hand. he remarked how easy it had seemed to shake a famous person;'s hand.

There ya go. Connect the dots. A loner butcher with tattoos (and an French surname I might add -- remember the Marsailles hit-men theory), He once rushed into the street to grasp Kennedy's hand (was it a test of some sort?). Lived in rooming house that also housed a graduate student who became a known liberal (maybe even "left wing") professor. Moreover, "Ted" (who's real name initials are GN, that's right GN, as in "grassy knoll" was "away on vacation" and didn't return until a few days after Kennedy was shot. And why did that graduate student order liver and onions, something he had never done before and then leave them uneaten, right around the time JFK was assassinated? Well, you might just have to wait and tune in to the History Channel, maybe around the next anniversary, maybe one or two later, to find that one out. But somebody is working on it. You can count on it.

Posted: Sun - November 23, 2003

2.5: The French Connection

Hey, all those signs saying "Bush Go Home!" "Bush the Butcher," "Get out of Iraq," and such that we have been seeing in TV the past couple of days - - they're in English! Not in French, but English. Aside from the fact that they are not the desired result from the $20 million or so that was spent on this elaborate photo-op and reciting of the tedious mantra of Bush-Blair lies and self delusions on the Iraq fiasco, it must have been seen with some amusement by the much vilified French. Especially, in that at least one British commentator observed that Bush's arrive in the UK was the least welcome visit since William the Conquerer in 1066. Perhaps he should stick to staged triumphal landings on aircraft carriers.

Most Americans munching up their waistlines on "Freedom Fries" have never been to France, or would care to go there when they can have a hokey version of Paris in Las Vegas and, best of all, without having to encounter any of those pesky Frenchmen. Those perks were unavailable to me when I was a visiting Professor Associe at the University of Paris in 1989, the year of the Bicentennaire of the French Revolution. I found my own frustrations with those obstreperous Gauls during my tenure there and wrote the following piece for KPBS-FM (and my travel archives) in my cramped studio in a little street in the 13th Arrondisment called Villa des Gobelins.

American in Paris

Did you ever have the feeling that you are in one of those science fiction movies where you come into a town that you think you know, but something isn't right about it? This is just a rhetorical question, but I think you know what I mean. Charlie, the gas station attendant who played on the high school basketball team with you, doesn't even acknowledge you when you pull in his station to fill up. Your old aunt Maude seems to look right through you, and says things completely out of character. Even your old girlfriend treats you like a perfect stranger. Something funny is going on, like in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," but you can't quite put your finger on it.

Well, I've got that feeling. I've been in Paris for four months now, a city I have visited several times before; but this time something weird is going on. At first I couldn't figure out what it was, but now I think I'm onto it. It's the Parisians, there is something very curious about them this time. They seem different, not themselves.

You probably know what I mean, because Parisians have a reputation. They are supposed to be arrogant, surly, and aloof. They are supposed to look down their aquiline noses at foreigners, particularly Americans. Even French people who are not Parisians come in for this treatment. And as the reputation goes Parisians are even supposed to be mean-spirited with one another, sort of the New Yorkers of Europe.

Ask any Midwestern American who has been to Paris for a few days on a package tour; they will tell you that they are never going back to Paris and be treated that way again. They will recall how they asked a Parisian how to get to Notre Dame and they ended up closer to the one with the football team. Or how they tried to order a simple ham and cheese sandwich and they waiter brought them a plate of the innards of some strange animal that he all but threw at them. They might also say how they attempted to use their best high school French at the hotel desk and the concierge snickered and said he didn't understand Swahili. That's the reputation I'm talking about.

Now either some strange virus has attacked the Parisians, or somebody has spiked their wine, because these Parisians today just aren't living up to their reputation. Au contraire! Maybe they are just setting me up for the big one, but the Parisians I have encountered thusfar have been coming across like Southern Californians. The lady I buy my Herald Tribune from smiles and thanks me warmly in her sing-song "Merci bien, Monsieur". My bank clerk told me to "have a nice day" on my second visit. And the man at the fruit stand actually let me choose my own apple rather than trying to slip me a bruised one. If this keeps up one of those notorious Parisian waiters is going to say: "Hi, I'm Jean-Paul, and I'll be your waiter today".

See what I mean? Something weird is going on here. Unless I'm stuck in some French sci-fi film there has to be some non-supernatural explanation for all this Gallic amity. One possibility is that, for some unknown reason, all the Parisians have taken a Dale Carnegie course; but I don't find that very likely. More plausible is that I'm not on a package tour that disgorges dozens of weary and, yes, sometimes ugly Americans into Paris hotels and restaurants, complaining about the rooms and asking directions to the nearest McDonald's. But that seems too logical. Something else is going on here, I just know it.

Now it occurs to me that this is the bicentennial year of the French Revolution, that major historical event in which the Parisians knocked down the Bastille, and after knocking off the heads of their king and queen, turned to lopping of one another’s heads. It was a long and bloody revolution and the Parisians, apparently enjoying that sort of thing, decided to have another in 1830 and a couple more in 1848 and 1870. Revolting people, these Parisians, or at least they used to be.

So maybe word had gotten out to them that tourists are going to be a little nervous about coming to Paris for the bicentennial because the Parisians might just haul out the old guillotine and start lopping off some tourist heads for old-times’ sake. Maybe they are working on their "Mr. Nice Guy" image (or is that Mr. Nice "Gee"?), or there won't be any American tourists around for the big party they have planned for this Summer.

I'm just guessing, but the only other reason I can come up with for all the current Parisian goodwill is that maybe the Parisians are afraid of us Americans. Consider the fact that we Americans are about as violent today as the Parisians were during the French Revolution. It could be that a lot of Parisians have since been to America and have discovered that an American might smile and say: "Welcome to America and have a nice day." But then these days Americans seem just as likely to pull out a .357 Magnum, or an AK-47 assault rifle and snarl: "Go ahead, Froggie, make my day!"

Radio Essay No. 39, © 1989 James A. Clapp. Aired KPBS-FM, Public Radio, May 5, 1989

Posted: Fri - November 21, 2003

2.4: A Modest Proposal

With the Massachusetts decision on Gay Marriage putting the issue back in the news the question has been raised as whether this will become the "wedge issue" in an strongly divided political atmosphere. Polls shop that most Americans (some 60+%) do not favor gay marriage because they fear it will destroy the concept of "marriage" and weaken the American "family." This makes it a rough issue for the more liberal wing of the American polity, particularly the Democrats.

Feelings run strong in this ideological territory; witness the horror of the Episcopalians (a certainshadenfreude ensues when another denomination has some "horrors") over their openly gay bishop. But it is also true that a majority of people feel that gays deserve the same "rights" as other people, even extending to their "unions." So there seems to be a difference over the use of the term "marriage." "Gay Civil Unions" are more acceptable to more people than are "Gay Marriages." Marriage apparently connotes "family" and many people do not want to allow gays unions to be called "families."

A slight detour is worthy of mention here. At the post office yesterday I bought a sheet of this stamp.

Could this mean that there is something wrong with a lot of American families even BEFORE gays and lesbians might get to call their unions "marriage," and perhaps even form families? Could this mean that all that Religious Right blather that implies that people who are "straight" and have found Jesus as their personal savior don't get a little liquored up and whack their kids and wives, of vice versa? Lordy, lordy, we can't do anything that might threaten that mythical pristine picture of American domesticity?

So, back to the semantics part of it, since it would be a shame to let semantics get in the way of matters of fairness and equal rights. How about this for a proposal (and possible Democratic plank):

Let's do a separation of Church and State on this one. Any two people of any gender (yes, even something freaky, like Michael Jackson and anyone stupid enough to marry him) can form a "Civil Union" and be entitled to all the rights that married people have. We just call it a civil union and that covers their rights, like inheritance, etc. Everybody has to do this to get these rights, even ex post facto. Then, any united couple can go to any Church that will "marry" them and get "married." They can call themselves "married" if they like and they can have or adopt children with the same rights that non-gay couples enjoy. Or, they can just walk around saying they are married, or gay, or extra-terrestrials, whatever, because it has no legal meaning. (But if you punch them for saying it you can be sued.)

Brilliant in its simplicity, eh? Well, of course not. But I will assume that it is if I don't hear some concerns and objections.

All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. L. Tolstoy,Anna Karenina, Ch 1

Posted: Thu - November 20, 2003

2.3: Heil the Conquering Hero

Somehow, beneath the almost sappy allusions to a new Reich in Sacramento that would have political foes newly resolved under the guiding hands of Der GoverFuhrer to work for the common good of all Kaleefornians, there were discernible the faint refrains of The Horst Wessel Song. It was only weeks ago, on the other side of the fires that showed us that the "terminated" Gray One wasn't such a bad sort after all, and a paragon of civility, that the campaign references were to storming the State Reichstag (oops, Legislature) and "kicking some butt."

And now, the onetime admirer of National Socialism and buddy of Kurt Waldheim played the fans in the inaugural audience with references to his immigration, not the taking of the Sudetenland, and family, not those impure non-Aryans. There were no references to the injuries of the Treaty of Versailles (but none to those of Enron, either). The hammy hands that won't take womens' "no" for an answer, didn't launch out in the old salute to the throng that assembled to "Heil" him into office, but there was, if one looked closely enough, that occasional smug pout and steely eye of one who felt the power of the obedient mob not long ago, but beyond the recall of those who believe history began with Terminator I.

Sure, these seem like petulant allusions, almost picking on the poor(?) man's ethnicity, hardly worthy of the norms of an avowed liberal. No, its his politics and attitudes, not his ethnicity (or would that be "race" and in "Master"), that will be "managed" out of sight as the silly diversion of youth in a steroid haze, that are of concern. He could have selected Konrad Adenauer as his idol. Sure, he's pro-choice and has some other worthy planks in the "social" side of his platform, and I won't gainsay them as political pandering, but the Gray One had these as well. But where's the choice he gave to women to keep from being groped? (C'mon Clinton-bashers, I can't hear you! ) So much is made of his potential for forging a "new trust" in political and political leadership. Based on what? Rhetoric alone. Well, if that's the case then I assert my constitutional right to mistrust, not only of this opportunist who steamrolled the other millionaire opportunist who bought this fiasco, but also his good ole boy business-friendly snake-oil. The first move appears to be a shifty avoidance of the no taxes pledge, a proposed $20 Billion bond issue (at probably what will be premium rates) that will add to the debt but (and does this sound familiar?) move it on down to the next generation. Can't you just see those companies that left Kaleefornia to go offshore to make a killing, screaming back into the state, as the GovernFuhrer promises?

No, there's too much not to trust, especially in a a claim to rescue California politics by groping it. (C'mon Clinton-bashers, I STILL CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)

Posted: Tue - November 18, 2003

2.2: The 11th Commandment

I really don't have much of a quibble with the 10 Commandments, although I really always thought that we only need the second one, and the rest would fall into place, and that we should drop the first one, which has caused more trouble in the world over time than just about anything else I can think of. The problem might be that there needs to be another commandment, which I think should read: "Thou shall not try to shove they religion up they neighbor's butt."

This would probably be lost on the likes of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who installed a ton and a half stone "replica" (Moses would have had one hell of a hernia) on the ten in a public building and refused under court order to remove it. Now Moore has a good chance of being removed from a job that anyone who doesn't understand the separation of church and state should not have had in the first place. (Geez, haven't Judge Judy and clarence Thomas give the judiciary a black enough eye?)

Now I realize that we're talking about Alabama here, but if these violations of my proposed 11th Commandment were restricted to that bastion of jurisprudence, I would be less concerned. As it happens, we have a similar situation right here in good ole San Diego, California, where for years now there has been a dispute over the presence of large white crosses on the tops of two mountains in the city, both public property. Getting rid of these violations of the sacred 11th has not proved to be any easy, or successful, matter.

Not that San Diego is the territory where one is likely to find substantial numbers of people who object to blatant violations of the separation of church and state. Long a hangout of fundamentalist religious radio stations (one of which was famous for telling its listeners to place their hand on their radio and if the felt any little buzz or vibration they should send in their tax refund check to his station), creation"science" crusaders, and assorted other hucksters of metaphysical nostrums, San Diego fits well within the cohort of credulous Americans who believe in the virgin birth, 71%, (more than believe in evolution). But I digress.

So, what about those crosses? Well they've proved harder to get rid of than Kim Il Jong's little nuclear project. The last I heard was that the courts were forced to rule that the crosses could not reside on public ground (I suppose at least until we approve of public crucifixions). So what did our courageous city council do: they decided to sell the little plots of land on which the crosses sit to private bidders, who just turned out to be to some Christian religious group. Voila? Christianity uber alles! Pretty clever the way they slipped around my 11th Commandment.

Why Christianity (at least the fundamentalist version) has to be shoved in everyone's face in this country is riddled with ironies. We can rage against the excesses of the Taliban and turn around and act like them. Women's rights are constantly under attack, the endless drumbeat to have our kids pray to God (not Allah or Yahweh) in schools, the muillahs of the extreme Christian Right continue to gain political influence among the highest level political officials (Bush's cabinet attending prayer breakfasts and bible study groups), and religious iconography (make that Christian iconography) regularly conjoined and conflated with symbols of patriotism.

Need I say more . . . ?

Yes, I do. How far is our leadership from the hated ayatollas and the Allahu Akbar screaming suicide bombers when they refer to "crusades" against political adversaries as members of the "axis of evil." This raises a oorrelary to the proposed 11th Commandment. It seems we need to separate church and state in political discourse as well. If we can't keep religion out of our schools and other public buildings and off our hilltops, how can we keep chapters and verses and words like "evil" and "infidel" from corrupting political speech with hypocrisy. No way anybody but a fool (and certainly not the leadership of Muslim countries) is going to believe Bush's proclamations that we are not at war with Islam when he won't do a thing to shut up a religious Christian bigot like General Boykin.

For those who have not had enough of this blasphemy I attache below a recent publication in The Wild East, the magazine of the Hong Kong Writers' Circle.

Invasion of the Soulsnatchers

“May the Force be with you.” My tone had an intentional mock solemnity.

“Huh?” one of them replied.

I don’t think that they get that sort of salutation very often in the streets of Kennedy Town, the harborside town at the west end of Hong Kong island.

Kennedy Town is a couple of tram stops to the west of ‘my’ neighborhood, Sai Ying Pun, and I decided to begin my reconnaissance of the vicinity by ‘tramming’ over there and making my exploratory way back on foot. It’s a gritty, working-class little “town” by my first impression. Much of the development is of recent origin, particular the high-rises along the waterfront, which is given over mostly to containers and workboats.

I went there thinking that it’s nice of the locals to name their entire town after our beloved, assassinated president, when many other countries have honored him only with a segment of a street, or perhaps a square. But it is a good thing I didn’t express to anyone my country’s gratitude for this salute, because the honored Kennedy, I learned later, and not by means of an embarrassing faux pas, is a former English governor of the Crown Colony, not our departed JFK.

“May the Force be with you,” I repeated.

“Oh, uh-huh.”

Despite my ambiguous salutation the two guys kept advancing from across the street. I was conflicted: part of me wouldn’t mind an encounter with Westerners, and English speakers, even after just a couple of days in Hong Kong; but part of me wants to tell these to guys to “fuck off!”

The second part is my reaction to any religious evangelist. These two happened to be Mormons, but my disgust with evangelism is ecumenical; I despise all evangelists. These guys are young, pasty-faced, short-cropped, and more business-like than reeking of a smarmy, “howdy and hallellulleh” piety. They are adaptable enough not to let the encounter falter. The dark haired one catches the allusion: “. . . and with you, too,” he replies, taking care not to use the term “The Force.”

“May the Lord be with you, too,” the sandy-haired one says, making sure to separate his deity from that of George Lucas. They’re young, but not stupid; they are college-educated (even if that did take place in Salt Lake City), they have learned to speak passable Cantonese, and at least they don’t have that Southern “wouldn’t-you-like-to-go-deer-huntin’-with-Jesus” version of American Protestantism.

“Et cum spiritu, tuo,” I fire back. “So how goes the soulsnatching business today.”

They’re well-trained and not easily deterred by insults. They ignore this one.

“What brings you to Kennedy Town, Sir?” ‘Elder John’ asks as if he never even heard my insult. The little plastic LDS badge on his clean, white dress-shirt identifies him. The only one he’s elder to is his companion, who is just earlier in his twenties.

“You can bet your good book I’m not out shopping for a nice new religion.” I find that I’m not saying this with enough acerbity, and I ask them if them if maybe they can recommend a good, clean brothel in Kennedy Town.

They smile, undaunted, and continue with the opening gambit.

Where you from in the states?” sandy-haired ‘Elder Thomas’ asks.

“You guys trained to alternate questions like one’s a ventriloquist and the other is the dummy?” It’s another insult, but I have a half-smile when I say it. I can’t stand soul-snatchers, but these guys don’t seem that offensive. Maybe they are getting the best of me despite their youth and my attitude. Maybe their training is really good. And, maybe I just want to have a conversation in my own language. In any case I know in the back of my mind that they are no less “victims” of their own religious upbringing than I am. It’s all indoctrination as far as I’m concerned and if I’d been born in Utah rather than New York I’d probable be “Elder Jim” and bugging the shit out of some poverty-stricken slob with a metaphysically-compromised immune system in some godforsaken country.

Actually it is they who are anxious to speak a little English; they have been doing the work of the Lord and Joseph Smith all morning, in Cantonese.

A truck that looks like the type that the Red Army uses pulls up an begins unloading fragrant bags of dehydrated sea food—squid, scallops that look like little brown buttons, shrimp, and tiny silver fish the size of baby fingers their big, dead eyes staring in surprise.

The proprietress of the shop we are standing in front of comes out half-shouting some Cantonese imperatives at the deliverymen. She is compact and bow-legged, strong-looking, as she pushes and pulls the large burlap and plastic sacks, adjusting them to their places on the sidewalk and sticking little handwritten price signs into their contents.

She glares at us and says something that would come across in any language as “if you’re not interested in today’s special on dried sea slugs why don’t you guys park your gweilo asses someplace else!”

Elder John smiles. “She would like us to move out of the way.” But I am already moving.

“Doesn’t look like you have a convert in that one,” I say as we slowly move under the awning of the next shop. I also couldn’t help noticing the little Buddhist shrine at the foot of the front door jam of the lady’s fish shop. Spent incense sticks lay in fragments in the little sand pot below some prayers written in gold ink on crimson paper.

Elder John says something back to the lady in Cantonese. He seems to speak it easily and confidently. I’m impressed, but the lady isn’t, and she dismisses him with a fishtail waggle of her hand and disappears into her shop.

“She says I’ll scare away the customers, but most of the people here are very nice to us.” Elder Thomas doesn’t look like he agrees, but his Cantonese is not nearly as good, he says, so people are more impatient with him.

It’s a nice opening for me. “Maybe if you just let these people be with their gods and goddesses they would be even more hospitable. When the hell are you people going to stop accosting people all over the world on their own streets and telling them ‘Boy, do I have a super new god for you!’”

Elder Thomas goes into the chapter and verse on Mormon evangelism and how they have their missionary work to do. There are, I learn, about 150 of them snatching souls in Hong Kong and the New Territories.

I know that if I was a high-ranking cadre in the PRC, these guys and the rest of the soul-snatchers that have plagued China like locusts for centuries, would be out of here or facedown in a rice paddy. I’m not just picking on the Mormons, either. Even my own teachers, my revered Jesuits, are included. They, in fact, were probably first soul-snatchers in these parts, arriving in the Sixteenth century in their black robes and using their brains to learn the languages and dialects. This was before the Europeans pried open China for trade in opium and other goodies in the Nineteenth century and exacted concessions that permitted their various churches to peddle metaphysical opiates to one of the last great supplies of unwashed souls.

Literally hundreds of missions were opened by a stew of evangelical churches including The Daughters of Charity, the Société des Auxiliartrices des Ames de Purgatoire, the Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Lazarists, the Marists, Salesians, which were only a few of the Catholic orders. The Baptists included the American Baptists, Gospel Baptists, the Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society, The English Baptist Missionary Society. There were Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Adventists, Methodists, Quakers, Lutherans, that were Free, Reformed, United, Allied, or whatever, and from nearly every country in the western world. And if the Confucians weren’t yet confused enough and the Buddhists bugged enough by this ecumenical free-for-all of soul-snatching there were the YMCA, the YWCA, and to prove that niche merchandising is not a 20th Century invention, The German Mission for Blind Females in China.

They did some good and were often well-intentioned, but I would have sent them all packing. But the Chinese for the most part did not. They did appear at times to have a bit of fun at the expense of these pious invaders. When the Jesuit Matteo Ricci asked the authorities in Peking for a site to build a catholic church the authorities complied. What the Jesuits didn’t know was that the ground allotted to them had once been a place of execution of criminals, and therefore, to the Chinese, accursed ground. The church that stands there today is the third, the others having been destroyed by fire and revolution. One hopes the Chinese are still having a good snicker at the hex and putting one over on those ‘foreign devils’.

“What is it that brings you to this part of the world, Sir?” It’s Elder Thomas again with the “Sir”. My age must be starting to weigh on him.

“Research, and a little lecturing. I’m on sabbatical.”

“Research on what?” he continues.

“I’m an urbanist. I’m interested in the effects that the handover of this city to its mother country is going to affect various aspects of urban life here.

“What sorts of things?”

“Well, for one thing I’m curious to know, now that Hong Kong has gone back to the People’s Republic of China, if you guys are going to get your butts ejected all the way back to Utah.”

They just look at each other. But I add: “But I don’t find that very likely. It looks to me that the mainland as well had made its Faustian deal with capitalism, so they are probably going to find a use for a religion that validates it. And as we all know, your religion has no prohibition on making a buck.”

“So you don’t think they will purge the missionaries. . .”

“Not if you render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. . .” I immediately regret how sententious that sounds. I sense that they are more “up” on their Book of Mormon than on geo-politics. “But if it were up to me. . .well, let’s just say that I can think of few behaviors more ethnocentric, arrogant and plain culturally-disrespectful than evangelism. Where do you people get off thinking that some religion that some guy supposedly got from an angel named Moroni a hundred years ago is superior to what these people have been believing for fifteen hundred years? The only soul-saving they need is from evangelists.”

They invite me to dinner and one of their socials. Jesus, these people just don’t get it. But I also accept their invitation because I realize that I haven’t had this much fun arguing religion since I was back in the dorm at my Jesuit college in New York. So I take their address down, ask them if all their wives will be there as well, and head for the tram.

When the date came I never went to the dinner. There was a time conflict with a better religion I had found: The Hong Kong Rugby Sevens.
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© 2002, James A. Clapp and Wild East Magazine
Posted: Wed - November 12, 2003

2.1: A "Devilish" Month

For a variety of reasons I've never cared much for the month of November. But rather than go into that, I enclose a piece from my travel archives about a city that we all know and love, with the exception of the Prince of Darkness. Although I am no more credulous about the existence of the devils than I am about the guardian angels that putatively do battle with them for the prize of our immortal souls, others do, and I must admit that blaming things on the Devil does spice things up a bit.

One Devil of a November in Florence

As this November passes into history the people of Florence, and the millions who perennially, physically and spiritually migrate there, may be permitted a tentative sigh of relief. This month marks the 24th anniversary of the great flood of 1966; time enough for many to have forgotten it, and a generation to have no memory of it at all. Of the 58 times Florence has flooded over the past 700 years November has proven to be the month with the highest probability that the Arno will rise and invade the city it cleaves. Adding a further dramatic touch is the fact that three of the six most severe floods—those of 1333, 1844, and 1966—have occurred in the hours bridging November 3rd and 4th. After the second occurrence on these dates the Florentine historian Giuseppe Aiazzi was moved to venture a supernatural explanation. "November 3 and 4—those are the Devil's days!" he wrote. "Following All Saints and All Souls, those festivals so strongly affirming faith in man's survival into a better world, the Devil periodically turns his rage against mankind."

While it may seem somewhat overly boastful for Aiazzi to link the fate of Florence with that of all mankind, the exaggeration is not so difficult to accept. Perhaps only Periclean Athens could rival Florence as a city which raised so many of its children to renown in the arts, sciences and letters. It is one of only a handful of cities of which it would not be outrageous to claim "belongs to the world."

And much of the world, particularly that part fascinated and infatuated with astonishing achievements of the Renaissance, comes to visit this spiritual hometown. Yet few of those who walk its history-laden streets and museum galleries have much, if any, memory of the flood which severely damaged many of the cultural treasures of Florence, and destroyed many others. In the summer, when most of the visitors arrive, the Arno typically flows low and placidly beneath the city's bridges, its banks so lofty as to defy imagining that they could ever be breached.

But the Florentines have long known better. Like the Adriatic, which all too frequently inundates its "bride", Venice, the Arno has been a tempestuous mate to Florence. Lorenzo de Medici, the city's greatest patron, wrote in the fifteenth century: "Its arrogant anger splits and beats away at the weak banks . . ."

Yet the events of November 3 and 4 of 1966 caught the Florentines by almost complete surprise.

November has always been the wettest month in Tuscany, and it was already raining hard as the local troops were preparing for the Armed Forces celebration on the following day. On the night of the 3rd the cinemas and cafes were crowded. By midnight the mayor, the chief of the Carabinieri, and nearly the entire population was asleep. In the next three hours the waters rose with incredible swiftness. Cellars were already flooded in the low-lying Santa Croce and San Frediano quarters, and the city drains were quickly overtaxed. Powerful jets of water mixed with oil from storage tanks that had burst were gushing from the city's manholes. By 3:00 a.m. electrical failures began that would soon plunge the entire city into darkness.

Still, by 4:00 a.m. most of the Florentines slumbered when a mass of water was discharged by the Valdarno dams, adding to and accelerating the deluge. The force of the river's waters, risen now to less than a meter below the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, tore away huge chunks of the embankment. Astonishingly, the vast majority of the city's inhabitants were still unaware of the disaster overtaking the city.

By 7:30 a.m. a vast lake was spreading over much of Florence. Torrents of water, trees and other debris smashed into the shops on the Ponte Vecchio, carrying away gold jewelry and gems from its shops. All electrical power was lost, thousands of houses were flooded, none of the bridges were passable, and nearly every road leading from the city was blocked by the waters. Florence was isolated.

Still, the waters continued to rise. By 10:00 a.m. most of the historic center of the city resembled Venice. The people, at last aware of the catastrophe befalling their beloved city, were helpless to do little more than try to save themselves. Some were trapped in the upper stories of buildings, some on the roofs, others made their way to the higher ground on the south side of the river. Several had already drowned.

At its peak on the day of November 4th the waters reached a height of over 20 feet in some areas. Nearly every major historic building had been flooded: the Uffizi, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Cathedral and Baptistry, the churches of Santa Croce, Santa Spiritu, Santa Maria Novella, and all the palaces of the great Florentine bankers, save for the Pitti.

When the water began to subside later in the day it slowly revealed the 600,000 tons of mud, filth and rubble in the streets and buildings. Fifteen thousand automobiles were destroyed, 6,000 shops were out of business, 5,000 families homeless. Great as those losses were, they were at least replaceable; the city's artistic treasure was another matter.

The city's enormous endowment of precious Renaissance architecture, painting, sculpture, and books and manuscripts were the essence of its people's pride, identity, religious and intellectual traditions, and, just as importantly, its present and future economic life. As soon as the receding waters would permit the Florentines rushed anxiously to the churches, museums and libraries that were the mind, spirit, and lifeblood of Florence.

The best estimates accounted that over 1,400 works had been damaged by the surging water, or the mud, oil and debris that it carried. Of these, 850 were seriously affected, requiring immediate attention if they were not to be lost altogether: 635 paintings on wood or canvas, 81 frescos and cycles of frescos, 14 groups of sculptures, 144 individual sculptures, and 22 illuminated manuscripts.

Among the damaged were some of the most important in Renaissance art. Cimabue's "Crucifixion," the huge painted crucifix considered to be among the first works which represented the transition from the art of the Middle Ages to that of the Renaissance, was battered by waters which surged through the church of Santa Croce at a height of 20 feet; much of its pigment had flaked off and been swept away. Important groups of frescos by Uccello, in Santa Maria Novella, and by Botticelli, in the Ognissanti Church, in addition to frescos by Martini, Veneziano, and Lorenzetti were severely affected by oil and water. At the very heart of the city five panels of gilded Ghiberti Doors on the Baptistry were dislodged and battered; only their gold and bronze weight kept them from being carried away.

Hundreds of musical instruments at the Museo Bardini, arms and armor in the Bargello, and Etruscan artifacts in the Museo Archeologico were also damaged. Over 200,000 books and manuscripts from the National Library were lost forever, as were 130,000 photo negatives of the Uffizi's collection of Renaissance painting, although, miraculously, none of its paintings were lost.

While the people of Florence dug their homes, shops and automobiles from the mud and began putting their contemporary lives back together, the city's curators and art restorers, supplemented by volunteers from around the world, set about with all the ingenuity and financial assistance they could muster to salvage the treasures of the city's golden age.

Owing to their efforts today's visitor to Florence must search hard to find the effects to the worst flood in the city's history. Here and there, on the corner of a building one may come upon etched dates and high water marks; that of November 4, 1966, the highest. Few, if any of these visitors will be around in the year 2066, when, meteorologists forewarn, November may bring an inundation of equal or worse magnitude to this illustrious city. Most of the visitors will tread the museums, churches and libraries, unmindful of the flood that imperiled treasures in them, unaware of the restorers' skill and diligence they witness along with the brilliance of the masters of the Renaissance.

Eventually, these pilgrims may make their weary way to the banks of the Arno to catch a refreshing breeze and bask in the gilded light of a fading Tuscan day. Well below them the Arno will glide serenely beneath the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, waiting for the Devil to choose his next November.
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