I'm tired of being an apologist for the United States. I've done a lot of traveling, I've met people from all over the world, I've lived outside the US for a year and a half, and everywhere I go, to everyone I meet, I have to explain that Americans are not all violent, racist, gas-guzzling religious fanatics. Our standing in world opinion has fallen very low, and I'm tired of trying to deny that this is the entirety of our culture. Oh, certainly, our movies and TV shows, our music and fashion, our junk and fast foods are all eagerly consumed around the globe, but I find that not at all reassuring. When McDonald's and Green Day are held in higher esteem than our government, I believe that to be a clear sign of serious problems. When Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks are more trusted than our president, and considered more sincere, it's time for revolution.
Virginia Tech, Wolfowitz at the World Bank, the Iraq war, obesity, divorce rates, energy consumption, education, cultural sensitivity, gang violence, global warming, drug use, general extravagance and waste, the list is seemingly endless of topics I have to explain and add nuance to. Often, people just want confirmation that what they've heard is true; for example, on the subject of American education, is it true that most high school students can't find Poland on a map? I'm forced to admit, that, yes, that's probably accurate. I then feel compelled to put it in context, which means admitting that most of them can't find their own state on a map either, so don't take it personally. Which makes me think of all the times I asked someone during screening at the blood center, Have you been outside the US or Canada in the last three years? and gotten an answer like, "Well, I went to Hawaii in May."
But I love my country. For all it's problems, I still believe in its promise and potential, and I want desperately for a leader who will realize it. I want us to stop spreading democracy at gunpoint, I want press freedom not to be dependent on ad revenue, I want our major exports to be the best instead of the worst of our culture, I want to stop having to say things like, "The American judicial system guarantees due process for everyone, unless you're black, Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, mentally-ill, developmentally disabled, have any kind of an accent, just kind of funny-looking, an illegal immigrant or have been classified as an enemy combatant by an untouchable, secret military tribunal or the CIA, in which case, you're shit out of luck."
So, to whoever comes out on top in November '08: Do something to make me a proud American again. Please.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
We're still number one
Ok, time for my knee-jerk liberal reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings. It's made big news here in Poland; pretty much everybody knows about it. I've had several discussions with students and friends, who, understandably, wonder what kind of country has such tragedies. I've been following the reports as well, and one statement has leapt out at me from most of them: "This is the deadliest campus massacre in US history." What bothers me about that is not the number of dead, though I am certainly saddened by that, and I feel deep sympathy for their friends and families. No, what I find most disturbing about that statement is that we've had so many campus massacres to compare this one to. This is the sort of thing that just doesn't happen in a lot of countries, at least not in Poland. They've certainly had their share of violence and repression, hardship and tragedy, more than seems possible at times, but campus shootings are truly unthinkable here.
How nice that is.
No metal detectors in schools. No full-time roving grief counselors. No media frenzies. No cliches like, "He always seemed so quiet." I tried explaining the expression "going postal" the other day, and that met with the same bewilderment. Because let's not forget our numerous workplace shootings as well. Don't know where Virginia Tech ranks if you include those, but I bet some statistician will be doing that soon; after all, schools and universities are also workplaces.
Why doesn't this happen here? Is it because people are more stable, less violent, less depressed, the culture values life more, Polish people are just better human beings? I don't think so. It's very simple in my opinion: THEY DON'T HAVE GUNS.
It's not that people are better in any significant measure, but if someone snaps in Poland, they just don't have the means to wreak widespread havoc. I once took an informal survey of several classes, asked the students if they owned OR knew anyone who owned a gun. Out of about 60, none owned one personally, and only two knew someone who did, in both cases someone outside their family. I can think of seven or eight people I know who are gun owners, and probably more if I tried.
I also think it's telling that this latest shooter was a first-generation American, a legal resident, but not from the US. That takes something away from any cultural arguments that we always make in our search for the reason "Why?" Virtually all of the 14-year-old boys among my students are devotees of various violent computer games, but even if they got that urge to try it in real-life, it would be nearly impossible for them to obtain a gun, and even then, it would likely be a single-shot hunting rifle, certainly not the kind of weapon one could use for a massacre.
I know, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people without guns just can't kill that many at once without being stopped. When will we accept this truth and disarm ourselves? We don't appear able to stop individuals from having these impulses, but we can remove the means with which they act upon them. I, for one, would be willing to see America lose its preeminence in this category.
How nice that is.
No metal detectors in schools. No full-time roving grief counselors. No media frenzies. No cliches like, "He always seemed so quiet." I tried explaining the expression "going postal" the other day, and that met with the same bewilderment. Because let's not forget our numerous workplace shootings as well. Don't know where Virginia Tech ranks if you include those, but I bet some statistician will be doing that soon; after all, schools and universities are also workplaces.
Why doesn't this happen here? Is it because people are more stable, less violent, less depressed, the culture values life more, Polish people are just better human beings? I don't think so. It's very simple in my opinion: THEY DON'T HAVE GUNS.
It's not that people are better in any significant measure, but if someone snaps in Poland, they just don't have the means to wreak widespread havoc. I once took an informal survey of several classes, asked the students if they owned OR knew anyone who owned a gun. Out of about 60, none owned one personally, and only two knew someone who did, in both cases someone outside their family. I can think of seven or eight people I know who are gun owners, and probably more if I tried.
I also think it's telling that this latest shooter was a first-generation American, a legal resident, but not from the US. That takes something away from any cultural arguments that we always make in our search for the reason "Why?" Virtually all of the 14-year-old boys among my students are devotees of various violent computer games, but even if they got that urge to try it in real-life, it would be nearly impossible for them to obtain a gun, and even then, it would likely be a single-shot hunting rifle, certainly not the kind of weapon one could use for a massacre.
I know, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But people without guns just can't kill that many at once without being stopped. When will we accept this truth and disarm ourselves? We don't appear able to stop individuals from having these impulses, but we can remove the means with which they act upon them. I, for one, would be willing to see America lose its preeminence in this category.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Standards and Measures
I spend a lot of time wondering about little things, always have. Where they come from, who made them, why they are the way they are. I've been trying for years to envision a zipper factory, or the machine that makes twist-ties, or how long the original roll of toilet paper was before they cut it down to a usable size and how they perforate the sheets and prevent them from tearing. Have you ever seen a roll of toilet paper that had a perforation that was already torn, even a little? Some serious technology went into that. Everything we use, from plastic bottle caps to buttons to staples and the little tin pour spout on a container of salt, somebody made, somebody designed, somebody said, this is how it will be. Who are these people and how do I become one?
So here in Poland, I've been noticing some differences in the way things are, the little stuff that is so standard you don't really think about it until it changes or you're like me and hit your head a lot as a child. Beyond the obvious gap of standard vs. metric measurements (which let me here note that, while I'm personally a big fan of pints and tablespoons, gallons and quarts, miles, feet, inches and all our other absurd measures, not least for the fun and intriguing idioms and expressions we get from them--"Give him a centimeter and he'll take a kilometer" just doesn't have the same ring to it, the same for "The .45 kilograms of flesh which I demand of him/ Is dearly bought as mine, and I shall have it," -- but I hereby publicly cast my vote for the switch anyway. Other than our English friends, the rest of the world uses metric and it's just silly that we don't.) there are many other differences that are common and ordinary and pondering fodder for me.
Take pillows. I grew up, as most Americans did, with a decidedly rectangular pillow. Roughly twice as long as it was wide. When a pillow case was needed, we went to the store and chose from among assorted thread counts, colors, materials and patterns. But almost all the cases conformed to this basic size and shape. Of course there are other sizes and shapes, but generally speaking, we have rectangular pillows. Now, I haven't been all over Poland, nor have I conducted a survey, but the pillows I've slept on here have been almost square. Just the teensiest bit rectangular. And when I moved into my current apartment, I needed to buy a pillowcase, and discovered that the stores carried almost exclusively this size and shape, thus leading me to deduce that this was the standard. How did this come about? I realize how trivial a question this is in the grand scheme of things, but I can't help imagining the millions of pillows and pillow cases in this country, and thinking of how this general agreement was reached. Because pre-Industrial Revolution, most people must have made their own, so when cloth began to be manufactured, and sewing became industrialized, did the factories impose this standard upon the populace, or did they produce what they knew to be an existing preference? If the latter is true, then how, in a pre-industrial era, did everyone come to agree on this size and shape, and why is it different in the US?
Another example is paper. Our standard is the good old 8.5 x 11". Even has a nice rhythm when you say it. Eight-and-a-half-by-eleven. Almost all our forms and documents, all our schoolwork, copies, computer paper, flyers for garage bands, eviction notices and phone bills, everything is on 8.5 x 11" paper. Not here. Not sure what the precise measurement is but it's slightly larger. Not much, not especially noticeable at first, but then I tried to put some printouts I got into a folder I'd brought from home. A tight squeeze widthwise, and the tops sticking out. Paper brings us to holes: no sensible, evenly spaced three holes, often just a very flimsy-seeming two, close to the center, but sometimes an overwhelming and unnecessary five, and of course, you need binders to match. That is when you can find one, as many people use these folders with elastic bands that seem nifty at first, but are really kind of irritating. Who decided all this?
Eggs come in tens, not dozens. There isn't a door knob to be seen, as there is a definite predilection for L-shaped handles. The windows are cool: the standard is for these convenient hinges that allow you to let it swing in just a few inches from the top, or open fully from the side (not that my landlord sprung for those, but just about everyone else has them). Beer comes in half liters, no puny 12 ounce bottles here. Light switches tend to be those flat kind, no actual switch-switches. I won't go into sockets and power supply. I have to do a bit of searching to find notebooks (always small, no composition sizes) with lines instead of graphs, and it's impossible to get college-ruled. Books largely favor trade-editions; not much of a market, it seems, for mass-market.
None of this is truly in the nature of complaint; it's just these are the things I think about, especially at certain times--like when I forget and trudge up stairs to the third floor, following directions given to me by a native, and realize I'm only on the second and should've just taken the elevator. Who agrees with me on this one? The first floor you come to should be called the first floor and if I ever find a descendant of the guy who decided to start numbering European floors from zero, I'm going to smack him a good one.
So here in Poland, I've been noticing some differences in the way things are, the little stuff that is so standard you don't really think about it until it changes or you're like me and hit your head a lot as a child. Beyond the obvious gap of standard vs. metric measurements (which let me here note that, while I'm personally a big fan of pints and tablespoons, gallons and quarts, miles, feet, inches and all our other absurd measures, not least for the fun and intriguing idioms and expressions we get from them--"Give him a centimeter and he'll take a kilometer" just doesn't have the same ring to it, the same for "The .45 kilograms of flesh which I demand of him/ Is dearly bought as mine, and I shall have it," -- but I hereby publicly cast my vote for the switch anyway. Other than our English friends, the rest of the world uses metric and it's just silly that we don't.) there are many other differences that are common and ordinary and pondering fodder for me.
Take pillows. I grew up, as most Americans did, with a decidedly rectangular pillow. Roughly twice as long as it was wide. When a pillow case was needed, we went to the store and chose from among assorted thread counts, colors, materials and patterns. But almost all the cases conformed to this basic size and shape. Of course there are other sizes and shapes, but generally speaking, we have rectangular pillows. Now, I haven't been all over Poland, nor have I conducted a survey, but the pillows I've slept on here have been almost square. Just the teensiest bit rectangular. And when I moved into my current apartment, I needed to buy a pillowcase, and discovered that the stores carried almost exclusively this size and shape, thus leading me to deduce that this was the standard. How did this come about? I realize how trivial a question this is in the grand scheme of things, but I can't help imagining the millions of pillows and pillow cases in this country, and thinking of how this general agreement was reached. Because pre-Industrial Revolution, most people must have made their own, so when cloth began to be manufactured, and sewing became industrialized, did the factories impose this standard upon the populace, or did they produce what they knew to be an existing preference? If the latter is true, then how, in a pre-industrial era, did everyone come to agree on this size and shape, and why is it different in the US?
Another example is paper. Our standard is the good old 8.5 x 11". Even has a nice rhythm when you say it. Eight-and-a-half-by-eleven. Almost all our forms and documents, all our schoolwork, copies, computer paper, flyers for garage bands, eviction notices and phone bills, everything is on 8.5 x 11" paper. Not here. Not sure what the precise measurement is but it's slightly larger. Not much, not especially noticeable at first, but then I tried to put some printouts I got into a folder I'd brought from home. A tight squeeze widthwise, and the tops sticking out. Paper brings us to holes: no sensible, evenly spaced three holes, often just a very flimsy-seeming two, close to the center, but sometimes an overwhelming and unnecessary five, and of course, you need binders to match. That is when you can find one, as many people use these folders with elastic bands that seem nifty at first, but are really kind of irritating. Who decided all this?
Eggs come in tens, not dozens. There isn't a door knob to be seen, as there is a definite predilection for L-shaped handles. The windows are cool: the standard is for these convenient hinges that allow you to let it swing in just a few inches from the top, or open fully from the side (not that my landlord sprung for those, but just about everyone else has them). Beer comes in half liters, no puny 12 ounce bottles here. Light switches tend to be those flat kind, no actual switch-switches. I won't go into sockets and power supply. I have to do a bit of searching to find notebooks (always small, no composition sizes) with lines instead of graphs, and it's impossible to get college-ruled. Books largely favor trade-editions; not much of a market, it seems, for mass-market.
None of this is truly in the nature of complaint; it's just these are the things I think about, especially at certain times--like when I forget and trudge up stairs to the third floor, following directions given to me by a native, and realize I'm only on the second and should've just taken the elevator. Who agrees with me on this one? The first floor you come to should be called the first floor and if I ever find a descendant of the guy who decided to start numbering European floors from zero, I'm going to smack him a good one.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Easter Blues
It's Holy Week here in Poland; well, ok, I guess it's Holy Week everywhere for Christians. An especially important holiday in a majority Catholic country. I say majority, because I'm here, and official and non-official counts of non- and other-believers run anywhere from 1 to 10% of the population. Nevertheless, starting tomorrow, just about everything will be closed. Most stores will remain open at least through Friday, some on Saturday, as will pubs and clubs, but all schools, museums, offices, etc., will shut down. What is an agnostic to do?
I try to refrain from ranting about pagan symbolism during the holidays here; it seems rude to do so as a foreigner, but as I get engulfed in eggs and rabbits a few comments do escape me. But it's very important for most Polish people, and I was raised to be polite.
Even largely non-observant Catholics here will attend Mass, take little baskets of food to the church on Saturday to be blessed, and spend the next four days with their families. It's a big eating holiday, rest, relaxation. But just remarkably little to do if you're thousands of miles from family and completely areligious.
Last year I went to Wroclaw (VRROHTSwav) for Easter, which is a beautiful city, and apparently has many great museums, art, sights, etc. I say apparently because I couldn't see any of it that wasn't visible from the street. Some things, such as the Panorama, a huge 360 degree mural, was closed almost a week before I even got there. This experience makes me leery of venturing out this time: I spent three days just kinda wandering aimlessly, always returning to the (admittedly very impressive, but quiet) Rynek (market square) and ending up in the Irish pub because it was open, where a very drunk Englishman tried to get me to go to a casino with him, which I wouldn't do since I know I have problems in casinos.
So, my choices are three: there's a "contemporary musical theater performance" of "The Mystery of the Passion of the Christ" in Krakow on Saturday, but it's in the Rynek and the weather has gone cold and gray here, expected to remain so through Monday; go with my friend Patrick to some little town where something is happening that he tried to see but missed last year, with the attendant problems of traveling on a holiday in a place where literally nothing but your hotel is open; or hanging out at home, reading, watching movies, and waiting for the end. The third actually sounds the most appealing, as I can read for days without appreciably noticing the outside world, but I feel compelled to do something with this time.
I'll decide tomorrow. In the meantime, those of you in more religiously diverse/secular/non-Catholic places, enjoy your coffee shops, movie theaters, pool halls, bowling alleys, grocery stores, malls, theaters, restaurants, convenience stores, video rental stores, and all the other stuff that will vanish for me soon.
I try to refrain from ranting about pagan symbolism during the holidays here; it seems rude to do so as a foreigner, but as I get engulfed in eggs and rabbits a few comments do escape me. But it's very important for most Polish people, and I was raised to be polite.
Even largely non-observant Catholics here will attend Mass, take little baskets of food to the church on Saturday to be blessed, and spend the next four days with their families. It's a big eating holiday, rest, relaxation. But just remarkably little to do if you're thousands of miles from family and completely areligious.
Last year I went to Wroclaw (VRROHTSwav) for Easter, which is a beautiful city, and apparently has many great museums, art, sights, etc. I say apparently because I couldn't see any of it that wasn't visible from the street. Some things, such as the Panorama, a huge 360 degree mural, was closed almost a week before I even got there. This experience makes me leery of venturing out this time: I spent three days just kinda wandering aimlessly, always returning to the (admittedly very impressive, but quiet) Rynek (market square) and ending up in the Irish pub because it was open, where a very drunk Englishman tried to get me to go to a casino with him, which I wouldn't do since I know I have problems in casinos.
So, my choices are three: there's a "contemporary musical theater performance" of "The Mystery of the Passion of the Christ" in Krakow on Saturday, but it's in the Rynek and the weather has gone cold and gray here, expected to remain so through Monday; go with my friend Patrick to some little town where something is happening that he tried to see but missed last year, with the attendant problems of traveling on a holiday in a place where literally nothing but your hotel is open; or hanging out at home, reading, watching movies, and waiting for the end. The third actually sounds the most appealing, as I can read for days without appreciably noticing the outside world, but I feel compelled to do something with this time.
I'll decide tomorrow. In the meantime, those of you in more religiously diverse/secular/non-Catholic places, enjoy your coffee shops, movie theaters, pool halls, bowling alleys, grocery stores, malls, theaters, restaurants, convenience stores, video rental stores, and all the other stuff that will vanish for me soon.
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