Garden’s up, surf’s up (yes, there is surfing in New England)

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently most of us here have been feeling as though it’s been raining for weeks, even though it actually has only been two days. But it was one of those relentless, driving, icy rains (is that an oxymoron?) that penetrates deep inside and chills to the bone in a way that snow doesn’t seem to do. This one was a particular affront, too, seeing that it’s almost May. For a while there, my burner was cranking it out almost as powerfully (and expensively!) as in the dead of winter.

And yet–yesterday, late in the afternoon, the sun came out and so did we. I went outside to see what’s going on in the garden. This is the wonderful time of garden hope, everything coming up in neat little packets, hardly any bugs or weeds to speak of (except for a clump of dandelions that emerged and bloomed virtually overnight, and which I subjected to vicious treatment). Everything is green and lush and promising. I sprayed the still-tightly-closed tulip buds with Deer Off (hot chili peppers and other sundry caustic items), hoping to save them from being eaten as soon as they bloom, as in certain other years. I noticed that all the little violet clumps seem to be sprouting white violets this year–some sort of throwback or mutation?

Only the broom (of the delicate lilac/rasberry-colored flowers) seems to have failed to survive the winter, in contrast to the terrible previous year, when we had no snow cover at all and a full third of my garden bit the dust. This year, lack of snow cover was most definitely not an issue; we had continual deep snow from weeks before Christmas until early April.

All the neighbors came out, too, people I’ve barely seen since last fall. Now the children are playing ball, the dogs racing around in delighted circles, and my new next-door-neighbors have finally emerged from their winter hiding to prove to me that they actually live here (I was beginning to have my doubts). Kids who were mere infants in the fall are now toddling around on fat little legs, getting in the way of the ballgame.

It’s time for a dump run, time to take my raked leaves and twigs and debris and put them in the large pile at the dump, to be made into compost that is then sold to make revenue (I live in a very environmentally correct town). On the way to the dump, I drive along a road which parallels the ocean. This is one of the perks of living here; the ocean is never very far away. There’s a point I always pass that features a rocky cove. Usually it’s fairly calm, but today it’s stirred up as much as I’ve ever seen it. Apprarently the storm that has finally passed through is still having its way with the ocean.

There are huge crashing waves near the rocks; that’s to be expected when the sea is churning like this. Way out, near a distant lighthouse and some islands, is a long white line that I can’t recall having seen before. It’s a huge area of breaking wave, most likely indicating where the ocean is more shallow, near some small islands. Then I see another line, and another.

I notice some small dark forms among the closer waves. They look like dolphins or sea lions. Harbor seals actually do live near here, and I’ve sighted them, but never in this area. But then I notice the surfboards; harbor seals do not carry surfboards, to the best of my knowledge. So these are surfers, about twenty-five of them, clad in wet suits and waiting for the next big one to ride in. It’s so cold out that I’m wearing my winter jacket; it can’t be above fifty, maybe even in the forties. I cannot even imagine how cold it feels out there, even with the wet suits.

I wouldn’t have thought there were that many surfers living within a hundred miles of me. And yet here they are; the call went out, and they answered it. How do they find out that the surf’s up?

Well, when in doubt, go online, I always say. When I got home, I had no sooner typed “new england surfers” into Google than I discovered this site, called “New England surfer,” and guaranteed to meet all the needs of said rara avis. Although, as it turns out, not so rara an avis, after all. Here is where they go for the forecasts that tell them when the surfing will be good. It also contains a surprisingly active discussion board, lists of best surfing areas, and all sorts of technical discussion of the finer points of surfboards and other equipment.

So, there are indeed New England surfers. Quite a few of them, it seems–a hardy and unique crowd. This spring surfing in weather that’s above freezing is apparently a rare treat, because most of these guys (and they are mostly men, by the way) find that the best New England surfing comes–you guessed it–in winter! That’s when the noreasters that tend to bring the big waves to these parts hit. This spring storm is unusual and wonderful, and that’s why the unaccustomed (and, to me, unprecedented) crowd.

For anyone who cares to explore this world, I offer the following: an article entitled “Crazy New England Surfers,” another one called “The Endless Winter” (the title a nice little riff on the popular surfing documentary “The Endless Summer”), and this, the piece de resistance, a video of a New Englander surfing in a snowstorm.

I’ll take gardening, myself.

A mind is a difficult thing to change: Vietnam interlude–after the fall

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(For earlier pieces in the series, see the right sidebar under “A mind is a difficult thing to change.”)

Introduction

No, this isn’t the long-promised Part 4C, the post in the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series in which I plan to discuss general changes in political/psychological beliefs wrought by the Vietnam War era, changes in the ways many people viewed our government, military, and the press. That post is still on the way, but it turns out that I need to break it down into parts. So this is the first part, which deals with a narrow and more focused question.

Once again, I don’t have statistics or research to back me up. I’m simply using my own remembered experiences, and the experiences of those around me, as a springboard for ideas about what might have been going on in people’s minds and hearts, particularly liberals growing up in those tumultuous times (and, since those days were the heyday of liberalism, a large percentage of those growing up in those times were liberals). I’m trying to be as honest as I can, and some of what I have to say isn’t pretty or noble. The following is not offered as an excuse; rather, it is an attempt at explanation.

The question

This particular post was sparked by a comment by Dean Esmay, found on this thread. His comment is as follows:

What continues to confound me is how many people who were staunchly against the Vietnam War still have not confronted the brutal reality of what our leaving that conflict wrought. The death camps, the millions of refugees who barely made it out alive, the horrors perpetrated on the people by Ho Chi Minh [sic; see this] once he was victorious…

I’d like to try to tackle the difficult question implicit in Dean Esmay’s comment, which, as I see it, is, “Where were you in the mid- to late-70s, oh bleeding-heart Vietnam War protesters? Didn’t the terrible aftermath of the Vietnam War convince you that you had been wrong to work so hard for US withdrawal? And, if so, why not?”

I think this is an excellent, although difficult, question (perhaps all excellent questions are difficult?) I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer–the situation is extremely complex–but this post is my attempt at a response.

Difficulty of facing unintended consequences

The first reason many who were antiwar during the Vietnam era have not really faced up to the negative consequences of their actions for the people of South Vietnam is that it is ordinarily incredibly difficult–for human beings of any stripe, whether liberal or conservative–to admit to an error of that magnitude. It is human nature that most people will do almost anything to avoid doing so. How many people can tolerate the terrible irony of having (in most cases, with the best of intentions) inadvertently, and with great naivete, caused the very thing they were desperately trying to prevent–the further suffering of the Vietnamese people? To acknowledge the situation of the South Vietnamese people who were left behind to the tender mercies of the North Vietnamese Communists would be to acknowledge an almost unbearable situation–one in which, like Romeo, whose best friend Mercutio was killed as a result of Romeo’s efforts to stop the fighting (Mercutio: I was hurt under your arm. Romeo: I thought all for the best.), the very thing they had tried to prevent would have occurred as a result of their activism.

Of course, the suffering of the Vietnamese people was not the only concern of those of us who had turned against the war. There was self-interest involved, also. In part 4B I described the weariness and cynicism people had come to feel, over time, about the conduct of what seemed to be an endless war. One of the main goals of the movement against the war was to ensure that no more Americans would have to fight and die in what was perceived (again, rightly or wrongly, but honestly) as a hopeless cause. Who, in the famous words of John Kerry, would want to be the last man to die for a mistake? The answer is: no one, if he indeed was convinced it was a mistake. The protesters were also successful in a related goal, that of ending the draft, which was repealed in 1973, the same year as the US withdrawal from Vietnam.

“It was inevitable”

As I said, it is astoundingly difficult to face up to the unintended negative consequences of actions that were thought to be “for the best.” Fortunately for those who supported the pullout, they didn’t have to face those consequences. There were many ways out of that dilemma. The best way out (and this was one that I took, and that I honestly believed at the time to be true) was that, if someone was firmly convinced (as I was at the time) that South Vietnam would have fallen to the Communists no matter what we had done, then all consequences– however horrific–are seen as inevitable, and therefore unavoidable. They are not seen as a result of the American abandonment of the South Vietnamese, they are seen as a consequence of the failed war itself, and then there is no need to take responsibility for them or feel guilty about them. Rather, one can comfort him/herself with the small solace that, as bad as the results were, things would have been even worse had we continued in a misguided and doomed effort. Even more people would have died, only to reach the same endpoint.

Notice I am not saying the antiwar advocates were correct in their assessment of the inevitability of a Communist takeover of the South. I am merely saying that, at the time, most of us sincerely believed it; and the press, as well as the majority of public figures, were overwhelmingly projecting this opinion in their analyses of the situation. So, given this set of facts, it is understandable that, although most antiwar activists regretted the horrors that followed the American withdrawal, they didn’t see any reason to relate them to their own antiwar efforts.

So, were we correct in thinking the outcome to have been inevitable? I certainly thought so then; I no longer think so today. My change of opinion is based on reading I’ve done on the subject in recent years, post-9/11, and especially around the time of the buildup to the Iraq war. We can argue over this issue ad infinitum (and ad nauseum), but the truth is that no one knows the answer for sure. The important point is that, for those who do still believe it today, it removes a burden of remorse that they would otherwise carry, the burden they would be taking on if they were to accept that they had been mistaken.

Other approaches

There were other approaches to dealing with the problem. One was to simply ignore it. That wasn’t as hard as one might think. After the American involvement was over, my recollection is that the news of Vietnam started to drop off the front pages and the evening news. Now that our own lives and the lives of our loved ones weren’t on the line via the draft, the whole story of the suffering Vietnam people could be allowed to recede into the background and join all the other sad tales of suffering around the globe, becoming part of that vast wail of humanity that we must somehow block out in order to have some joy in our own lives. The effort that a person would have had to have made at the time to learn more about what was happening in Vietnam after the withdrawal, once it no longer was front page in-your-face news, was one that not many people were likely to make. Remember, again, how long the war had been, and how much news we had assimilated over the years; how many hopes dashed, how many fears felt and horrors viewed. People were only too happy to have Vietnam recede into the background after all those terrible years of concern.

Is this callous? Yes. Is it admirable? No. But it’s also a normal and self-preservative fact of human nature. And, because of the concomitant “it was inevitable” idea, it’s easy to see why there seemed to be no point in dwelling any longer on what could not be helped.

Another way some people (a much smaller number) dealt with it all was to see the stories of what was going on in Vietnam after we withdrew as an exaggeration or a lie. These people felt that the situation wasn’t really all that bad; that the Vietnamese people, as John Kerry had famously stated, didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. To those who believed this, they felt it was just a tiny proportion of the South Vietnamese people who were suffering; and that most people didn’t care what form of government they had, they were just happy to see peace at least.

Then there was that minority on the very far left who believed Ho and the Communists to be heroes. Sure, they said, there was a little suffering going on in South Vietnam when the Communists took over, but it was just on the part of the people who had been our capitalist imperialist lackeys. And it was all OK, anyway, because, in the end, the society that was being built would be a better one. After all, when making an omelet, you have to break some eggs, right? The numbers who felt this way were small–but they existed, and they still exist. To them, there was, and is, nothing to rationalize or explain. To them, the fall of Saigon was not a fall at all; it was an ascension.

So, we have a wide variety of reactions, explanations, and rationalizations, some more acceptable than others. As I said previously, I personally have come to believe that there was at least a fair chance that Vietnamization might have worked, had we not pulled the financial rug out from under the ARVN. I also believe that, by the time the decision to cut funding was made, most of us were so demoralized, so weary of a lengthy process of killing that seemed interminable and endless, so confused about what the Vietnamese people themselves wanted, and so uncertain of what the outcome would be, that we simply were tired. We wanted out, and we were going to get out, and so we did. I personally feel a deep and terrible sense of regret about what happened, and about my own inability to see what was happening more clearly.

Here is an article I came across the other day, on the fall of South Vietnam. Please read the whole thing, although it’s long. I’m not a historian, and I’m sure there are people who will question the story detailed in this article. But, if it is true (and I have found as yet no reason to doubt it), it is beyond chilling. I want to draw your attention in particular to the phrase “little-known battle;” by the time the events described here were occurring (1975), few in the US were paying much attention, because we no longer had much of a military presence in Vietnam. The events described were a violation of the Paris Peace Accords by the North Vietnamese, who were emboldened by the fact that they knew the US had lost the will to do fight, or to assist the South Vietnamese in fighting.

The little-known battle for Phuoc Long was one of the most decisive battles of the war, for it marked the U.S. abandonment of its erstwhile ally to its fate. Le Duan’s “resolution” had been all too correct. In the face of this flagrant violation of the Paris Accords–and it was deliberately designed to be flagrant so as to clearly test U.S. resolve–President Gerald Ford pusillanimously limited his response to diplomatic notes. North Vietnam had received the green light for the conquest of South Vietnam.

From the same article, here is an exchange between the author, whose task it was to negotiate the terms of the American withdrawal with the North Vietnamese, and a North Vietnamese colonel. Read it and weep.

“You know you never beat us on the battlefield,” I said to Colonel Tu, my NVA counterpart.
“That may be so,” he said, “but it is also irrelevant.”

Lessons learned from Vietnam: all that is necessary to win a war against the US is to turn domestic public opinion against it, even if you are militarily outclassed, even if you are defeated in every battle. It’s a lesson that was not lost on our current opponents. In a sense, our recent task in Iraq has been to reverse that perception, to finally learn the lesson of what happened so long ago and far away.

Vietnam and Iraq are very different countries, and these are very different wars, but there is one thing that is a constant–the paramount importance of the battle for public opinion in the United States. Oddly enough, even some of the players have been the same: John Kerry, for instance.

So, in closing, here is John Kerry, speaking on the topic of what will happen in South Vietnam after we withdraw. It is taken from the transcript of his debate with the very young and skinny John O’Neill, which took place on the June 30, 1971 Dick Cavett show. I offer it as a good example of the mindset that lulled some of us into believing all would be well.

MR. CAVETT: No one has said that there’ll be a bloodbath if we pull out, which is a cliche we used to hear a lot. Does either of you still think there would be a—

MR. O’NEILL: I think if we pull out prematurely before a viable South Vietnamese government is established, that the record of the North Vietnamese in the past and the record of the Viet Cong in the area I served in at Operation [unintelligible] clearly indicates that’s precisely what would happen in that country.

MR. CAVETT: That’s a guess, of course.

MR. KERRY: I—

MR. O’NEILL: I’d say that their record at Thua, at Daq Son [phonetic spelling], at a lot of other places, pretty clearly indicate that’s precisely what would happen. Obviously, in Thua, we’ve discovered, how many, 5,700 graves so far, at Daq Son four or five hundred.

MR. KERRY: The true fact of the matter is, Dick, that there’s absolutely no guarantee that there would be a bloodbath. There’s no guarantee that there wouldn’t. One has to, obviously, conjecture on this. However, I think the arguments clearly indicate that there probably wouldn’t be. First of all, if you read back historically, in 1950 the French made statements – there was a speech made by, I think it was General LeClerc, that if they pulled out, France pulled out, then there would be a bloodbath. That wasn’t a bloodbath. The same for Algeria. There hasn’t been. I think that it’s really kind of a baiting argument. There is no interest on the part of the North Vietnamese to try to massacre the people once people have agreed to withdraw.

Many people listened to this debate and heard what they wanted to hear, which is that it would be better if we pulled out, better for everyone. To the best of my recollection, I was one of those people. I didn’t like Kerry, even then–something about his air of slightly bored, unctuous superiority rubbed me the wrong way–but O’Neill seemed foolishly and naively optimistic. At the time, it seemed that the world-weary, war-weary Kerry was the winner of the debate. Now it’s he (and, by implication,we) who sounds like the naive fool.

[ADDENDUM: For the next post in the series, Part 4C, go here.]

Oh give me a tennis court, where the buffalo roam

The New Neo Posted on by

One’s an anomaly, two may be a trend. First there were those elephants in the Seoul restaurant, now we have a herd of buffalo on a suburban Baltimore tennis court.

Apparently, like girls (and the rest of us), large mammals just want to have fun. Take in a restaurant every now and then, play a friendly game of tennis–it seems a small thing to ask. Note, too, that the tennis court is in an “upscale” neighborhood–these guys know the good life when they see it.

Winston Churchill speaks (and cries)

The New Neo Posted on by

Some wonderful quotes, this time from Winston Churchill:

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

And from this site:

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

“Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful can see it for what it really is – a strong horse that pulls the whole cart.”

“Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself by the handle.”

“My education was interrupted only by my schooling.”

“I utterly decline to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.”

“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, and still yet if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance for survival. – There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

And here’s a website devoted to debunking Churchill myths, including quotations falsely attributed to him–among them, regrettably, the following favorite:

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: “Surely Churchill can’t have used the words attributed to him. He’d been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! and would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal.

And yes, yes, I know that Churchill was not perfect. He had flaws. But I don’t demand that people be perfect. I happen to admire him greatly for his unflagging courage, his leadership during WWII (despite his understanding, shown in the fourth quote, that war is a difficult and unpredictable undertaking), his moral clarity about Nazism and Communism, his astounding ability to express himself in simple declarative English sentences that sound like the most powerful poetry, and even for the fact that he was well-rounded enough to have been a rather decent painter.

I also thank Churchill for having given William Manchester the inspiration for what may well be the best biography ever written, the two-volume The Last Lion. Certainly it’s the best incomplete one; it is a deep regret to me that Manchester died before writing the final volume of this work–which, even minus the last installment, constitutes 1729 hardcover (or 1792 paperback) highly readable and vastly entertaining pages.

There’s one other thing that has always struck me about Churchill. Unlike many great men, he was a loving husband and father–even though, like many of the children of fame, some of his kids ended up having problematic lives. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with one of his daughters:

Q: Did your father have time to show you affection when you were young?
LADY SOAMES: Both my parents were enormously affectionate, visibly so, and he was a great hugger, my father, and loved having us around. The stiff upper lip of the British upper class had really no part in our family life; it was something I read about in books. I may have been deeply shocked the first time I saw my mother cry, because that was as a result of a great drama in the family, but I often saw my father weep and it never struck me as odd that a man should express emotion.

Q: What kind of thing made your father cry?
LADY SOAMES: He was moved by events and tragedies, by people behaving nobly, by poetry … I’ve seen him recite Shakespeare and his eyes brimming with tears. He wept easily. He wasn’t ashamed of it.

An extremely unusual combination of characteristics were united in Churchill, a man for whom the word “heroic” can be applied without hyperbole.

Ho ho ho Chi Minh City

The New Neo Posted on by

Since we’ve been talking so much recently about Vietnam, this article, entitled “Why Go Now,” in the travel section of Sunday’s NY Times, caught my eye.

(By the way, the title of my piece, for those of you too young to remember, comes from the old lefty taunt/chant/hope of Vietnam War days: “Ho ho ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win”–a chant that I, as a liberal rather than a leftist, neither sympathized with nor recited.)

Here’s an excerpt from the Times article:

Why Go Now?–Because 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is finally growing up. With a prettified, gentrifying downtown, an array of international hotels and now direct flights from the United States via United, it has never been easier to visit. What’s more – and this may shock anyone who was mobbed by postcard vendors or stalked by optimistic cyclo drivers back in the mid-90’s – there has been an overall relaxing of the city’s aggressively capitalist nature.

Which is not to say that Saigon – as everyone from your maé®tre d’hé´tel to your moto driver calls it – has slowed down. Compared with the stately elegance of Hanoi’s French colonial streets and cafes, this city of six million remains brasher, more outgoing, more energetic – a New York City to Hanoi’s Washington. Eating, drinking and shopping are not just primary pastimes but full-time pursuits, and the streets are packed with 100 cc Hondas ferrying housewives and hip teens alike from cafe to market to nightclub. The constant noise and activity, plus frothy, hard-to-identify smells (grilled pork chops? diesel exhaust? durian?), can overwhelm even the residents, but just think to yourself: It’s like Manhattan with mopeds. And like New York, the city offers the chance to get lost in the bustle, and to emerge from it with your own personal map of the best back-alley banh mi sandwiches, the most secluded rooftop swimming pools and the perfect glass of iced coffee.

Now I know that it’s just an article in the travel section, and as such is not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of current-day Vietnam, but it certainly seems to make the picture seem a lot rosier than it is. Disclaimer: I’m not a Vietnam expert, by any means–but it is fairly clear that Vietnam’s capitalism is only skin deep, covering an economy that is mostly state-controlled (oops, I hope I haven’t violated my own rule about not writing about economics), and a typically suppressive and repressive Communist police-state government. Hardly “New York with mopeds,” especially in the political sense.

For those interested in modern-day Vietnam, I recommend this article. Written in 2000, it’s probably somewhat outdated, but it seems to me to offer a fair picture of the country–although those among my readers who are Vietnam experts might be able to say whether that is correct or not.

Here’s an excerpt that expands upon the travelogue picture presented by the Times article:

Change is inevitable. The real question is, Will the change be evolutionary or revolutionary? Casual observers of Vietnam, impressed by the size and vitality of the “Honda at the cybercafe” crowd, speak of a coming generational change that will sweep aside today’s geriatric leadership. But this optimism is far too simplistic. True, the French-speaking veterans of the “senior” generation, esteemed for having fought the wars and unified the nation, are rapidly passing from the scene. But the next generation, 40 to 60 years of age, has begun to run the country and will not readily give up power and privilege. This “middle” generation, trained in Moscow and the capitals of the Soviet bloc, is committed to the VCP. The “junior” generation that grew up in the more open environment of the past decade will have to wait. Moreover, within this younger generation there will be competition, as the sons and daughters of current party members vie to inherit jobs and privileges.

And this, in particular, riveted me:

Another contradiction is that although the North won the battle, the South may yet win the war…Today a gradual “Southernization” of the North is becoming visible. The industrial parks on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City and the rice paddies of the Mekong delta now drive the national economy, producing two-thirds of the nation’s wealth and accounting for 80 percent of its tax revenue. Southern constituents urging privatization, entrepreneurial initiatives, and capitalist ideas are pressuring party politicians and the rigid ministerial bureaucracies of the North to change. The more robust economy of Ho Chi Minh City rewards its inhabitants with considerably higher wages than those earned in the nation’s capital. Thus in the struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the people, the former Saigon could win over Hanoi after all.

So, we may be able to replace that old chant with a new one: “Ho, ho ho Chi Minh City is gonna win.” Although it lacks the sparkling rhythm of the original, it makes up for it in ironic and tentative hopefulness. Will demographics, capitalism, and time allow the Vietnamese people to finally achieve a free and democratic society? I sincerely hope so. How many of the aging leftists who recited that long-ago chant would agree?

Sandals: on the cutting edge of fashion

The New Neo Posted on by

Sandals. Summer. Freedom. Foot-binding.

Foot-binding? you ask. What does that have to do with sandals, summer, freedom?

Well, I would have thought the answer to be: nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Or, perhaps: opposite. But apparently, I would be wrong.

I am flabbergasted by this article in today’s NY Times about the lengths to which women apparently still go for fashion. Having been raised in the era of the obligatory girdle, for example, I know that fashion has always involved elements of pain, and probably always will. But–the sandal? To me, the sandal has always represented the opportunity to liberate the foot from winter restrictions, from chafing and binding and tightness.

But something has happened to the sandal. They’ve buried Birkenstocks, trumped Tevas, nixed Naots. They have found a way to make sandals remarkably painful, and at a remarkable price, too. Ah, progress!

Eva Gajzer, who sells shoes and clothing at Kirna Zabéte, a SoHo boutique, has witnessed the casualties. “Band-Aids, I see them all the time,” Ms. Gajzer said.

Suddenly women are pulling out shoes with straps “like little knives,” she said. “They walk into the store with their feet completely covered in blood.”

Ms. Gajzer faults the shoemaker, not the wearer. “When you’re paying between $300 and $600 for a pair of sandals, you expect them to be remotely comfortable,” she said. “Otherwise the designer should be smacked.”

I’m not so sure the designer of $600 sandals shouldn’t be smacked–just a teeny bit, anyway–even if the sandals are “remotely comfortable,” but that’s not the point. Straps, like little knives? That’s taking “cutting edge of fashion” to a whole other dimension.

Home again

The New Neo Posted on by

Amtrak report:

Well, by the end of the trip, 80% of the toilets were dysfunctional. And the train was virtually full (methinks there is some sort of correlation between the two).

On the other hand, the seats were comfortable, my seatmate was silently plugged in the entire time (laptop, headset), the train was exactly and precisely on time (4 hours NY-Boston)–and we are alive, unlike at least 50 people in today’s horrific and tragic train wreck in Japan.

In light of my discussion yesterday of European safety standards vs. US ones, I wonder how Japan safety regulations factor in. Excessive speed seems to be the leading theory for the cause of today’s crash. A terrible, terrible thing.

Part 4C: work in progress

The New Neo Posted on by

An update for those awaiting Part 4C of the “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series: it’s in the process of being written.

But I always seem to underestimate the amount of work these things take (hmmm, I wonder what that’s all about). Previously, I said that it should be coming out early this week. That still might happen. But it’s more likely to be out mid-week, or even towards the end of the week. I will update further if that changes.

Traveling again

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m going home today.

According to the Amtrak website, my train is sold out. That should be…interesting.

And, as luck would have it, this appears in today’s NY Times, entitled “Acela, built to be rail’s savior, bedevils Amtrak at every turn.”

Excerpts from the article:

Before the first train was built, the Federal Railroad Administration required it to meet crash safety standards that senior Amtrak officials considered too strict. That forced the manufacturers, Bombardier Inc. of Canada and GEC Alstom of France, to make the trains twice as heavy as European models. Workers dubbed the trains “le cochon” – the pig.

Some experts have speculated that the added weight contributed to a series of problems, including the latest one, with Acela’s wheels, brakes and shock-absorbing assemblies. Federal regulators are still investigating the cause of those problems….

The railroad agency has long required that passenger trains be heavier than European ones to withstand crashes.

Bombardier knew its new train would have to meet those requirements, a spokeswoman said. But Mr. Downs said he asked the rail agency to ease that standard for the new high-speed trains, to no avail.

“They decided they wanted to make this the safest train in the world,” he said. “All my engineers thought the rules were nuts.”

It’s interesting that some of the problems with the Acela seem to have come from the relative strictness of safety standards here in the US vis a vis Europe. I’ve noticed this trend before in other areas, such as the pharmaceutical industry. For example, those who recall the thalidomide babies may remember that there were relatively few born in this country as compared to Europe, because our regulations on the medication’s use in pregnancy were stricter.

I have no way of knowing who is right in the case of train safety–the US or Europe–and whether the regulations are too strict here, or are too lenient there. If I lack expertise in economics, I am a wizard in that field compared to my knowledge of train design. But I suspect that the sentence “All my engineers thought the rules were nuts” may be telling. Then again, maybe not.

In any case, it’s just another topic on which the US and Europe don’t see eye-to-eye.

Economic illiteracy

The New Neo Posted on by

Even though I was a good student, economics was my nemesis. I passed it, but it was a slow slogging grind, and it didn’t quite stick. And, although I’ve made an effort to learn more about economics since then, every time I try, my eyes seem to glaze over and I find myself nodding off over the book.

It’s not something I’m especially proud of, but at least it keeps me from writing a whole lot of claptrap on the topic.

However, lack of economic acumen doesn’t seem to stop many (probably many on both sides, to be fair) from spouting off on economic subjects. Blogger Dennis the Peasant isn’t too keen on these folks. He is a bona fide tax expert and CPA, as well as being a very funny guy–that’s funny ha-ha, not funny strange. (Oh, well, maybe just a little funny-strange, if you look at his photo–although, come to think of it, who am I to talk on that score?) Dennis takes to task those who write about economic matters while being economically uninformed.

I have a strong feeling that I have a great deal of company in my relative economic illiteracy. I’ve been struck by how many people know enough to get by–keep their bank accounts in order, do a little investing, pay their taxes–but don’t really understand the ramifications of specific proposals designed to affect the ecomony. And yet we need good information in order to make decisions on issues that matter: what to do about the deficit? What about tax cuts vs. tax hikes? Who–if anyone–is right in the battle of the dueling experts? Do they even know? After all, economics is not exactly a science on the order of chemistry or physics. How can the vast majority of us who aren’t tax attorneys or CPAs wade through the vast quantity of information– and misinformation, deliberate or otherwise–out there?

To a certain extent, of course, that’s true of any topic that has technical aspects–which is most topics. But I have a hunch that the subject of economics is a particular sticking point for many, whether they’ll admit it or not.

The view from Brooklyn Heights

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York.

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a prepoderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyachinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me–I used to see it almost every day when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

A mind is a difficult thing to change: Part 4B (Vietnam–photographic interlude)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Previous posts in the series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Interlude
Part 4A]

There were two widely-circulated and iconographic photographs taken during the Vietnam War. If you were around then, I can almost guarantee that you saw them, and that you remember them. They are so famous that you may have seen them and remember them even if you weren’t around at the time.

The first photo shows the February 1968 field execution of a Vietcong. Amazingly, the picture appears to have been taken at the very split-second the bullet is exiting his head. The prisoner is young-looking and slight, even boyish, dressed in a plaid shirt. He is facing the viewer and we see his face clearly and frontally, wincing, although the shooter is seen only in profile. The Vietcong’s hands are tied behind his back, and he seems terribly vulnerable. The entire photo conveys the idea of an innocent victim put to death by a ruthless and almost faceless executioner, as well as the brutality of war in general. There is no question that this photo, presented without much context, shocked people and engendered the belief that the South Vietnamese we were defending and dying for were no better than the Vietcong in their brutality.

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The other photo came a few years later, towards the end of the war, in June of 1972. It is the photo of the little girl running down the road, shrieking, her clothes blown off with the force of the blast (or burned off? torn off? who knew?) her burns visible on her naked flesh. She is surrounded by other children, some of whom are shrieking, mouths open as in the Munch painting, conveying wordless horror. The children are without their parents; the only adults in the photo are several blurry and helmeted soldiers in the background (in some versions the photo was cropped to take out the soldiers on the right). The sky is dark with smoke. It’s a terrible evocation of the anguish that war inflicts on its most innocent of victims, children. A photo you couldn’t help looking at, and then you couldn’t help looking away from, and then you couldn’t help but remember it. By the time the photo was published, it was near the end of a war which had lost most of its support, but support eroded even further as a result of its wide dissemination.

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The photos tugged at people at a deep emotional level, screaming, “War is bad. Stop it. Stop the madness.” Furthermore, they induced a deep feeling of guilt, making the onlooker somehow conspiratorial with the executioner and with those who had dropped the bombs—doubly conspiratorial, both as voyeur to unspeakable violence, and as a citizen of the country, the US, seemingly responsible for both acts.

It never occurred to me at the time that there might be more to learn about these photos than what I already knew. That there might be a whole other “story behind the story,” one the media wasn’t telling. After all, one picture is worth a thousand words—right? Pictures don’t lie—right? What more could there be to tell? What more could there be to know, and what difference could it ever make?

And yet, it turns out that there was more. Lots more. That “more,” when I finally learned it, didn’t change the fact that bad things happen in war—lots of them. But that “more” made a difference in the way that some viewers (including me) saw those photos, the South Vietnamese military, the US, and the press.

But I didn’t discover what that “more” was until about two years ago, around the time of the Iraq war. So I’m going to need to wait until I get to that point in my tale to tell the story behind the photos, and how learning the truth about them, after so many years, was one of many steps I took that swept me along the path of change, post-9/11.

[Next post in series here.]