part 5 :: long weekend in berlin :: east vs. west

these small smooth stones and bricks look like they could have been collected by me. i have a very similar stash at my house - bits of brick that have been in the water, a stone that resembles a bird, smooth stones, a general impulse to collect. so much i can relate to and find in various baskets and on shelves in my own home. 

we had a lot of interesting conversations over the weekend. i learned so much. and in some ways, it was a blessing that there was a language barrier. if i'd have been able to converse on equal footing, i wouldn't have had to listen as much as i did. it was good for me. and i was exposed to some very different opinions than my own. i think in these times when people are very polemicized, it's too easy for us to shut off and not listen to someone whose opinions are different from our own. i'll admit to having done so myself. but not being able to jump in with my own opinions made me do more listening and less formulating my own answer in my head instead of listening.

it was eye-opening. today, 34 years after the fall of the wall, this family still regrets it. they miss the society they had in east germany. they were important artists with meaningful work and a beautiful home. they traveled all over the eastern bloc, practicing their craft, participating in exhibitions and meeting other artists. and when the wall fell, it all went away (except the house, they do seem to have kept the house). and they do seem to have still been able to live from their art. but a big part of the prestige crumbled with the wall. and they had a lot of regrets.

it seemed to make them especially susceptible to conspiracy theories and it also weirdly made them love putin and hate america. they were very much on the russian side of the war in ukraine and very resentful of the ukrainians who had flooded into germany. they completely saw ukraine as russia and understood that putin wanted to bring it back into the fold. they blamed the entire thing on biden and nato.

and maybe there are some grains of truth in that. letting ukraine think they could be part of nato was a provocative act. it's one thing with the baltics, but quite another with ukraine. 

and listening to them, still fully in thrall of the propaganda they had been brought up in, i realized that i too am in thrall to the propaganda i was raised in. and even though i've been resisting it for years - i did after all study russian due to a deep and abiding loathing of ronald reagan - i am still stepped in it myself. 

and perhaps the truth is somewhere in between. 

maybe what we all want is for our foundation to stay the same. it's hard if your country disappears and is absorbed into another country over night, or if it's falling apart before your eyes due to craven, power-hungry politicians driven by financial interests who wouldn't know the truth if it hit them over the head. or a supreme court hell bent on taking it back to the stone ages. it does something to you and your picture of yourself. 

i know trump being elected shook my foundations (and my back teeth). so it's no wonder they still have regrets that the only country they ever really knew was on the losing side in a battle that wasn't entirely theirs to win or lose. 

and while i do not agree with them that putin is right, it did me good to have to be quiet and just listen.

and to look around their beautiful home, at their beautiful collections of things and realize that we actually have a lot in common. 

people are such complex creatures. we can hold so many contradictions at the same time - praising putin's war while being a gracious host. hating america, yet welcoming one american warmly into your home. there's so much more to us than we let ourselves see these days. 

the end of the innocence

i had a discussion with my sister some weeks ago about don henley's 1989 classic the end of the innocence. go watch it, i'll wait here...

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standing by

When "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But i know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by man
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind

You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But i know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say good-bye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

what was interesting is how different our memories of the song were. she finds it very political, whereas the only politics i can find is the stanza about the tired old man that we elected king (has anyone ever described reagan more aptly?). for me, that summer was the one where i had a very painful broken engagement. i was devastated and lost 17 pounds in a week, mostly in tears shed. that felt like the end of my own innocence and a real transition into adulthood. it caused my life to change course...shifting from plans to attend u.c. irvine to iowa city and the university of iowa. looking back, i think it made me less trusting of potential boyfriends for years afterwards, really ending my own romantic innocence...poisoning my own fairy tale. in other words, i found the song very much about my own situation, even though reading the lyrics now, i can clearly see that it was about one's parents splitting up. my own happily ever after had failed (thank odin now, looking back), so i sang along at the top of my lungs as i drove my little gold pontiac fiero and felt like the song was written specifically for me. especially after i met a handsome summer fling who gave me back some confidence and made those lines about the tall grass in the wind and the small town in each of us ring true. it was really more or less the anthem of the summer of 1989 for me.

for my sister, her departure for college was on the horizon and she felt the pressure of that. i think we both thought that our parents wouldn't be able to survive the empty nest, having such separate interests. so the words about daddy having to fly spoke to my sister and she felt a heavy weight of responsibility for keeping them together. and watching the video, with its odd 50s feel (aside from the shots of tattered reagan posters and ollie north), it does seem much more political that it ever seemed to me at the time. and though i was home that summer, i definitely didn't feel the same pressure my sister did to be the glue holding our parents together. in the end, their marriage held, though some part of me still wonders why when they shared so little. i suppose staying together was just what you did in their generation (speaking of the 50s).

in these times, where our entire existence is smeared in the nasty politics of our post-truth era, it does seem that our innocence has ended once and for all.

* * *

today's lack of truth has its roots in postmodernism.

i heard about this piece here on T.O.E.
and i'll admit to feeling a little guilty for all that derrida, foucault and baudrilliard i read in college.

* * *

the problem is way deeper than trump. 

election day in denmark

it's election day in denmark. we vote for the municipal and regional representatives. i say we, because even i, as a non-citizen, can vote in the municipal and regional election. there are a lot of parties in denmark - left (which is actually right), conservative, the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti - they're just a shade to the left of nazis), social democrats, socialists, radicals, a left party called enhedslisten, which wants to send denmark into an ecstatic state of fourierian utopian socialism.

i have a pretty clear idea from the national level, what each party stands for, but it gets a little murky and diluted at the municipal level. and tho' you'd think the regions are between national and municipal, in denmark, they're not (basically all they decide about is the hospitals), they're really a third tier. DR, the national media outlet, has a quiz you can take to determine who you should vote for (there are so many candidates and you can only vote for one, so it's hard to know what each individual might stand for). the candidates were asked to the take the quiz as well and then the results match you with the ones whose answers were the most like yours. here are my results:

they illustrate nicely how far the local politicians are from their national party lines. i come out as most in agreement with someone from enhedslisten, which is at the far left of the spectrum on the national level. tho' i am not an advocate of utopian socialism, i could possibly be inclined towards their thinking, so the result isn't that surprising. what is, however, surprising, is that the candidate i'm next most in agreement with is from venstre, (which tho' literally left, is actually right), the second most right wing party in the country. on the side i least agree with, it doesn't surprise me that at the top is a member of dansk folkeparti, the party which has done all they can in the years i've been in denmark to capitalize on fear and demonize immigrants. what is surprising is the place in that column of a member of enhedslisten - that means that their two candidates represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in our local election.

the person that i was planning on voting for doesn't even make either list, which leaves me a bit in doubt. she is, however, one of the few i've actually spent time talking to about the issues, so perhaps that should count for more than the results of some media quiz.

tho' there is generally high voter turnout in denmark, people are saying they will stay home from this election. i personally think it's because there are too many candidates and people feel they can't get their head around it to know who to vote for (i know i feel that way). however, i do intend to exercise my right to vote. i think it's important and i'm grateful that i'm legally allowed to do so, despite not being a citizen. what happens in my municipality (which is more like a county in american terms) affects me, so i'm pleased that i have a say.  with so many candidates, the election can be decided by just a few votes, so it might even be that my vote actually counts.

i'll have to do some more thinking before i go in and tick that box later today, but i know already now that it's not going to be a member of dansk folkeparti. i never did like their politics, but last week, their "equality spokeswoman" spoke out against a toy store catalog that had featured boys playing with girl toys and vice versa, saying it was "perverse." that level of perverse thinking will definitely not be getting my vote. nor will anyone from venstre, whose national leader is in trouble (again again) for flying first class to the tune of 700,000 kroner in his capacity as director of a dodgy environmental organization (GGGI). not to mention at a more local level, one of the politicians from venstre declared in a neighboring municipality that "it's over with approaching the municipality in english."

i imagine i'll land somewhere in the middle and probably vote for the woman who seemed sensible and intelligent when i spoke with her a few weeks ago, even tho' she's not a member of the party i most identify with (radikale). sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

where are all of the dannede people?

danish has this great word, dannelse. google translate tells me it's formation in english, but it's more than that. it's a combination of education (the danish word for that being uddannelse), being widely read (at least partly in philosophy), having travel experience (slow travel of the kind favored in another age) and displaying good table manners. kirkegaard was a dannede man. erudite, gracious and a deep thinker.

the dannede person is capable of synthesizing complex thoughts and having a coherent overview of complex situations, further s/he is able to articulate real arguments with a basis in logical thinking.  s/he dresses well and can equally well dine with royals or with a table full of smoking intellectuals at the algonquin. s/he probably writes - essays, novels, fairytales, poetry or perhaps even the constitution. s/he commands respect because when s/he says something, it's thought-through and erudite.

we are sorely lacking such people in the world today. and i'm not sure how it happened. husband's theory is that it all went sorely wrong when the masses got money. once we no longer needed to be particularly educated in order to succeed financially, people stopped seeking education. eventually these people, who lack any basic training in how to form logical arguments and systematic ways of thinking about the problems facing the world, end up in places like the congress of the united states. and it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

they have a lack of respect for the principles of a democratic process they don't understand - instead behaving like naughty children who throw a temper tantrum and stand and stomp their feet when they don't get their way. they don't understand the bigger picture or the tradition into which they've fallen - that when a bill is passed by a majority and signed into law, you cannot later tack it onto some other bill which has nothing to do with it and hold a whole country hostage. that's not how democracy works.

what seems to be the saddest part of the kindergarten that is now the american house of representatives (and i'm being sorely unfair to kindergartens here) is that there doesn't seem to be any adult supervisors. i have read time and again over the past week that this is a handful of extremists with a new and decidedly not dannede stranglehold on the repugnant party. there was a time when there were smart republicans out there, but they seem to be curiously powerless and silent and not doing a damn thing to rein these clowns in.

how on earth can the united states go around the world, forcing democracy down on the heads of afghanis and iraqis when they can't even get their heads around how it works at home?

i shake my head and feel grateful to be observing it from afar.

* * *

please help gwen get stories to her students.

there's a new troglodyte in town

never underestimate the bitterness of the losers of small-time local politics. nor frankly, the bitterness of the big-time national sort. i've read things in the past week that would make your toes curl. but this is about the local sort.

the local group that i became part of back in june, has a website that's in its baby, infant stages. i say baby, infant stages, because websites take time. you can't have everything there all at once. for one thing, that would be dumb in terms of google searches (we're already dumb enough in that area, as our website name contains both the word "give" and the word "live" - just imagine how the google algorithms down-prioritize those common words) and for another, it takes time to build up content. stories take time to tell. it's the nature of stories. and projects. and life. and websites.

one of the few things we can put there, because we know it at this stage, is a little mini-bio of the board members. since in denmark, like most of the world, one is where one works, my profile includes a reference to my company. sans link, i might add.

this evening, a few members of the group received a series of mails from one of the bitter folks who wasn't elected that evening back in june, complaining about the "advertisement" for my company on the site. the mention in my profile is no more an ad than the two who work for the local schools mentioning them by name are advertisements for the schools. or the treasurer who mentions the business she works for (her husband's business) or the chairman, who mentions having his own architect firm. we are where we work, so i can see nothing wrong with mentioning that. and i have to say that it pretty much pisses me off to be accused of advertising for doing so. it seems you're damned if you don't say where you work and damned if you do.

what do you think? is it an advertisement to include your work information in your profile on an association website? or when i answer an email question about the site and my automatic signature includes my phone and workplace, is that out of line? these are my contact details, so i'm easy to reach. is that really out of line?

danish has a great way of describing a guy like this...his shoes are too small. way too small. 

a terrifying act, but not terrorism

last weekend, a 28-year-old somali man broke into the home of kurt westergaard, the political cartoonist behind the most famous of the infamous mohammed cartoons that appeared in danish newspaper jyllands posten in 2005 - you know the one which depicted mohammed with a bomb as his turban. the young man had an axe and he was bent on killing westergaard because of his cartoon. it was big news and even BBC world ran the story again and again all weekend.

the young somali didn't succeed, westergaard locked himself in his specially-secured bathroom and set off the alarm direct to the police. they were there within three minutes. the somali tried to run and threw his axe at the police, after which he was shot three times in the hand and leg to prevent him from fleeing and taken into custody. most shaken was westergaards 5-year-old granddaughter who was sitting at the table in her pajamas when the incident happened.

this is a gravely serious incident and it has everything to do with a clash of extremist islam against core western beliefs like freedom of speech. in a way, it's not unlike the fatwa against salman rushdie over the satanic verses - with fanatics of a religion against a purveyor of freedom of artistic expression.

on sunday berlingske devoted 8 pages to calling it terrorism. it is careless use of that word, begun by bush and his cronies, that has brought us to a point where it begins to feel quite meaningless. terrorism is an act of aggression against a group of innocent people - a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace or metro, the airplanes bringing down the world trade center - those are terrorism. but an assassination attempt on an individual over a specific incident, while undoubtedly terrifying to the individuals involved, is not terrorism. and to call it such takes away meaning from true acts of terrorism.

we need to be more careful than this with the language.

short-term thinking has long-term consequences

here we are at number 600 and it seems like just yesterday that i did no. 500! that's a lotta posts written in about two and half months. i'll admit i've felt a bit lately like i haven't really had anything of substance to say. maybe it's because my mind is on x-bows and ice-class tankers and ships that run on LNG and it seems like with all the crafty stuff i usually share here, that's not really the stuff for this forum. but there's some shipping stuff on my heart and on my mind that i just have to write about today in this, my 600th post. because it feels like those round numbers shouldn't be wasted.

* * *

last week, there was some hubbub in the news when one of the tabloids reported that the former minister of commerce, who recently stepped down from his post and from the leadership of the conservative party (of his own accord, by the way), had been on a whole lot of golf outings and hunting trips with the glittering heads of the danish business community. i'll admit that doesn't really surprise me all that much. it's called lobbying. companies do it. politicians partake. and influence is won, influence which actually goes both ways. it's how business is transacted. where's the scandal?

one of his big causes, no doubt as a result of these golf games and hunting trips, was something called "det blå danmark," which led a rather significant campaign to keep denmark among the main seafaring nations in the merchant fleet of the world. a big part of it is/was a drive to get young people to choose seafaring and shipping in general as a career. it wasn't the most effective campaign in the world, as far fewer are seeking admission to the officers' education than are needed. however, i'm not convinced that it was the wrong campaign, but more that going off to sea isn't really as appealing as a career anymore.

there are a variety of reason for this, as i see them:

1. young danish women expect their man to take part in household duties on an equal basis. if there are kids, the men are in there changing diapers. if you're out sailing half the year, it's a bit tough for this to be equal.
2. young danish men, while largely very attractive, are, to put it bluntly, afraid of the young danish women and their expectations. on other words, they're pussy whipped (to put it even more bluntly). this is bad for the officers' education (which although open to girls, is still overwhelmingly populated by boys). (clarification: this renders the boys too scared to choose this career.)
3. people can't imagine being out of touch--they expect internet, SMSing, email. not all ships have this onboard, as satellite broadband solutions are still very expensive. ships generally have email, but it's pushed to the satellite by the captain a couple of times a day. young people (and i would count myself here), can't imagine being without their twitter and facebook and blog and what have you. do we exist if we're not online these days?
4. seafaring is no longer a way to see the world. port stays are short and people are working their fannies off with loading and offloading cargo during the entire stay. there's very little time for shore leave.
5. people these days no longer feel "married" to a particular career. we try a variety of things and have different jobs in different industries. people don't go to work for one company at 20 and retire from the same company at 65. 
6. in denmark, the education to be a finished senior officer, including sailing time, takes 7 years. if people want to take a 7-year education, they become a doctor. those fiddling with this education have misunderstood their audience--people who want a long education aren't interested in being seafarers and people who are interested in being seafarers are not interested in a long education. (i'm generalizing, but it holds up pretty well.)

there needs to be a revolution in the way ships are crewed if this is going to become an appealing career choice. perhaps treating it more like the airlines do. when the ship "lands" in a port, a new crew could take over the offloading and loading, while the sailing crew gets some time off ashore--thereby getting to see a bit of the world. of course, this only works for cargo vessels, the whole offshore support vessel world is another story--and they've already made adjustments--wherein people are on shorter rotations (2 weeks on, 2 weeks off in some cases). 

there are great things about sailing as your job. if you're northern european, you're probably home for half the year and out sailing the other half. not a lot of jobs can boast of 6 months paid vacation. it's less for people from other countries (e.g. the philippines, which provides 25% of the world's seafarers)--they are generally out for 9-10 months and home only 2-3 months a year. it depends on what conditions you're culturally willing to accept and it depends on how good your unions are. northern europeans have had strong unions, so the conditions are pretty good. 

but, back to that commerce minister...i wonder what will happen now that he's gone? the young, smart, up-and-coming young lady who replaced him doesn't appear to be the golf course/hunting schmoozing type. and she' seems a bit fancy for det blå danmark, so she'll no doubt have another pet cause. but it seems to me that it's important for denmark on a geopolitical stage to be a seafaring nation. when you're pretty much entirely dependent on trade because you don't really have that many natural resources (a bit of oil in the danish sector of the north sea), having a role in international merchant shipping seems important. if there's no one in the government with the ear of the shipowners, reflagging ships to flags of convenience (marshall islands, liberia and the like) and getting those sailing personnel elsewhere (read: at lower costs) and moving ship/crewing management to places like singapore just might start to look very appealing to the bottom line. especially in these times where no stone of savings is left unturned. denmark's geopolitical position aside, what will it mean for the several thousand danes who are sailing in the merchant fleet today? and where will the danish shipowners get their experienced seagoing personnel for key positions ashore if no one goes to sea anymore?

i fear a time of short-term thinking and solutions is on the horizon and that they will have long-term consequences. i wish those good old boys would get back out on the golf course and sort this out.

something i don't understand

i've not been too political here, although i have strong opinions about politics. i strangely haven't felt the need to share them too much. but, on the plane yesterday, i was reading the IHT and Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Roger Cohen and Garrison Keillor were all talking about the election. of course, it's their job to do so and not so much mine, my editorials run a bit more to the use of simulators and computers in general in the training of seafarers. however, there's something that i just don't understand...

it's something i've been thinking about for awhile, but especially keillor's piece got me thinking about it again...what is it about this anti-intellectual argument that works for the republicans? why does it work at all? what on earth is GOOD about being anti-intellectual? the only thing that comes to mind is that it's easy. it's easier to tout such beliefs and faux arguments than it is to actually educate yourself and make real ones.

further, why does this "average person" argument that the mccain people are making about palin seem to be resonating with so many people? i don't know about you, but i don't want my president or vice president to be an average person. i want them to be great, extraordinary even! i want them to be smarter and more experienced, more worldly and with a better network of really bright advisors than anyone else on the planet. it's a really big responsibility running the united states, it takes more than an average, ordinary person to do the job.

we've seen what the boundless mediocrity of an average guy could do with the place over the past 8 years. i count myself as very fortunate to have lived outside of the country that whole time. the country is mired in two unwinnable wars, it seems that the spreading of democracy to places that have no significant educated middle class isn't really working out all that well, the divide has grown ever greater between rich and poor, gas prices have quadrupled, food prices are rising, the dollar is worth about as much as the old italian lira, the economy is in the toilet, the deficit is out of control and a new cold war is knocking on the door because russia awoke while bush was occupied elsewhere. frankly, we don't need another average guy or girl in the white house, we need someone better. someone great even. is it too much to ask that it be someone with some functioning brain cells? dare i say someone a bit more intellectual, maybe? not someone who was miss congeniality in the miss alaska pageant and believes that jesus hung out with the dinosaurs and who firmly believes in sexual abstinence for teenagers instead of sex education, but can't manage to convince her own daughter of that argument. those just aren't the qualities i'd like to see in the white house.

and we will see her in the white house because john mccain is like 600 years old, has had cancer not once but THREE times and is never going to live out a full term in office. that's a pretty stressful job and it won't be good long term for a guy who is 73 years old by the time he takes office.

i wanted to see a woman president, but i can tell you that this right wing, moose hunting, hockey stick wielding, trailer trash wench from alaska was not what i had in mind.

and yes, i chose that language on purpose, lest i became too intellectual in my arguments.