Here is some food for thought, were that possible for the Donald Trumps (and Peter Duttons) of this world.
Who is the most famous American illegal immigrant?
There are many candidates, but have a look in the wallet, bleaders in the U.S.A. Got a ten spot? Look at Alexander Hamilton. He is one of the finalists.
First, why is he on the ten, and then how did he get there.
He is on the ten because he created the United States currency. He devised the reserve bank system, coinage, paper money and a lot more. A founder indeed. (He was also an artillery officer in the Revolutionary War, more military service that Trump has seen.)
Until he was murdered, it was widely supposed Hamilton would succeed George Washington as leader of the Federalist Party. It was Hamilton who first bruited the Washington Monument.
Hamilton was also an undocumented, illegal immigrant born out of wedlock to a French mother on a Danish island in the Caribbean Sea who entered America at age eighteen. What a trifecta. Moreover his maternal language was French. He learned English as a teenager at a Jewish school and from the Dutch businessman for whom he worked.
What would Trump or his local imitator Dutton make of that?
A voodoo frog on a bicycle and a bastard to boot. Literal in the case of Hamilton and figurative in the other cases.
The Foxy rapprochement – beat me by a day
The closer Donald Trump gets to the Republican nomination the more the media, other Republicans, and some Democrats will discover his virtues. It is always the same, every four years the cycle is repeated as though for the first time.
Earlier in the campaign qualities deprecated and ridiculed in a candidate, will come to be accepted and then celebrated as positive.
For example, inattention to facts will transform to strategic thinking, untrammelled by petty details.
For example, flippant and destructive remarks, will be transformed into suggestions, and trial balloons.
For example, hostility to Hispanics, refugees, Muslims, women, left handers, homosexuals, will become — thanks to the alchemy of opportunism — unifying remarks.
For example, vague and diffuse threats to other nations will become, presto, disguised diplomacy.
The media always leads the way in this prostitution. When it seems a candidate is going to win, the realisation follows that an accommodation will have to be made with the candidate to keep manufacturing the news.
Even a big target like Trump will get the benefit of this self-censorship. Indeed, the more he threatens the media, the sooner some of its representatives will fall into line in the hope of securing favours before others comply. When it comes to self-serving opportunism, no one can beat Murdoch’s organs.
Soon there will be a rapprochement between Foxy News and The Donald. ‘You read it here first!’
Other Republicans will accept their own candidate, no matter what. All the posturing and playing hard to get will evaporate when success looms. The office seekers ever so subtlety seek office with more finesse than Chris Christie.
Then there will be Democrats who see Trump’s pull in their electorate, and have no wish to rile voters. These are the ‘If I keep quiet maybe their will not notice my party label is Democrat’ leaders. Some of them will couch their campaign publicity to omit the very word ‘Democrat.’ such leaders as they are.
Jimmie Carter went from ‘Jimmie Who?’ to a sage in this kind of transformation. Ronald Reagan’s habit of falling asleep in meetings, became a cool detachment. John McCain’s long past use-by-date became maturity. Mitt Romney’s narrow sectarianism became a virtue.
‘The Readers of Broken Wheel recommend’ (2016) by Katarina Bivald.
Chick Lit and I want more of it!
A delightful account of the culture clash between a single Swedish tourist who comes to Broken Wheel, Iowa, population 640 and declining. Sara is her name, and though she is classroom fluent in English the Iowa accents and idioms do not readily translate.
The good citizens of Broken Wheel are delighted to find a tourist in their dwindling midst. Sara left Sweden because there was nothing there for her, and she is pleased to be warmly welcomed.
Sara, however is nonplused, because her pen-pal and prospective host for the stay in Broken Wheel, Amy, is nowhere to be seen. She and Amy have been corresponding about books and life for a long time. The absent Amy has left instructions that Sara should stay in her house and make use of her books. She does.
Caroline runs the town by the force of personality. Formal positions mean nothing, and in the end that pays off, but not before this pillar of rectitude learns herself of sin first hand. Wow!
Jenn chronicles it all in her newsletter, blog, and private diary. Grace observes with disdain, a shot gun at the ready. The Grace women are always armed.
George stays off the drink one day after another, that is, until his long lost daughter returns, and then leaves again. The second loss is too much for George.
Andy and Chris pull the beer at the tavern, and the six hundred residents accept this gay couple without a word.
Cornfields play a part, too, because after all it is Iowa; there are a lot of cornfields, but none as scary as the one in the first episode of ‘Star Trek: Enterprise.’
Spot the Klingon.
Then there is handsome Tom who cannot help noticing the new face in Broken Wheel. He is too handsome for her, and she is too smart for him, but, well, in books anything can happen, right Mr Darcy?
Then Gavin the regional representative of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service appears. Gavin hated his old job in the USCIS because he had to arrest and deport hard working, god-fearing, polite, resigned, clean, and illegal Mexicans who never complained about how badly they were treated.
His remit is now Europeans, and Sweden is in Europe, right? Europeans, these he is ready and willing to arrest and deport for the slightest infraction of visa rules. If only…
Gavin descends on Broken Wheel with the full might of Federal government at his disposal, and finds that he is overmatched against Caroline.
Katarina Bivald
To give the devil its due, I noticed this comment on Good Reads
‘This book was absolute rubbish. 394 pages of stupid observations written in a clumsy and somewhat childish language combined with unbelievable characters.’
A salutary reminder of why I do not bother with Good Reads.
I did it! (Again.)
I have made one hundred visits to the Newtown Gym on the current annual membership, which continues to late September. Three or so days a week after walking the dog around the park I head for the gym, while Kate takes the mutt home.
I cannot vouch for either the 4 a.m. start or the midnight finish.
A visit to the gym consists of twenty-five minutes on one of the stationary bicycles or the upper torso whirly-gig. There follow stretches of the calf and thigh. Then comes a test of some of the metals to see if they are still heavy. The weights will includes both leg and upper body.
When pressed for time I omit some, or all of the weights.
The gym routine involves a uniform of sweat pants and shirt with a red jacket, pockets stuffed with reading matter, water bottle, sun glasses for the walk to and from, cleaning cloth for the glasses, earphones, and a neck pouch for the iPhone and notebook. That is in addition to the house keys and wallet in the sweat pants pockets, along with the magic fob to enter the gym. Locked and loaded.
I read on the bikes and listen to podcasts on the upper torso machines, hence the earphones. If possible I use a device near a window to watch the world go by on King or Wilson Streets. The first choice is listening is ‘In Our Time’ with Lord Bragg from BBC4, followed by ‘The Writer’s Almanac’ with Garrison Keillor, and ‘Grammar Girl’ with Mignon Fogarty. Choices two and three come into play when his Lordship goes on vacation.
I keep notes on what I do at the gym, so as to vary the exercises from one visit to another, in the notebook. It is partly encoded, since I am the only reader.
Usually the routine is finished about 9 am. At home a star goes on the calendar date of each gym visit, as per daughter Julie’s instructions.
Here I am après le gym on the way to Best and Brightest last week.
‘Brazzaville Beach’ (1990) by William Boyd
A very unusual locale and set-up for a krimi. Bravo!
The action centers on a research station in the forests along the Congo River where a multinational group of scientists observe chimpanzees sometime in the 1960s. The narrator is a recently-minted PhD who muses on what led her to this place when she is not watching the monkeys. (I do so detest backstories because they are distracting.)
The book offers intriguing soupçons about the primatological research into the social customs, practices, and habits of a clan of chimpanzees, along with a study of their diet, and movements, including bowels.
In the distance, on the far side of a mountain range there is a four-way civil (tribal) war going on, and that spectre cannot be ignored, since it might influence the funding agencies to withdraw support. Of course, there are twists and turns among the scientist, though our protagonist is so junior, she seldom sees the professional rivalries firsthand. That is, she is out in the field observing, while back in the base camp the more senior members of the party wrangle over precedence. What she sees there in the field is remarkable and in time upsets the established order.
Spoiler alert.
The book recounts three intersecting conflicts: there is war among the chimpanzees, there is conflict among the scientists over the data and its interpretation, and the tribal war mentioned above. In time, the three come together. It is all very ambitious. The first two provided more than enough material, and this reader found the intrusion of the third inevitable and unnecessary.
The most interesting aspect is the primatology. The manners and morēs of the chimpanzees in the wild, the relations among them, including the conflict that is a war in all but name. But also of interest is the relationships of the primatology observers with the chimpanzees. The scientists personify the chimpanzees with nicknames, though technically they have specimen numbers, these latter are only used in the final write-ups. Nor is there any doubt that the chimpanzees recognise and distinguish the observers from themselves and that they know one observer from another, and there is one harrowing moment when that recognition is crucial.
Years ago as a prospective text for the Power course, I read Frans de Waal’s ‘Chimpanzee Politics’ (1985), a study of chimpanzees in the Arnham Zoo in the Netherlands, a book that is written with panache and insight, along with a few gratuitous reference to Machiavelli that I logged in my collection of inanities about him. While de Waal’s book has much technical detail about quasi-experimental tests done in captivity, it is easy enough for a general reader, and leaves one in no doubt of the intelligence and capacity to learn of chimpanzees.
Our heroine survives it all but some others (including some of the chimpanzees) do not. She finds that among the tribal warriors are some decent folks, that the mercenaries attracted to the conflict are a varied lot, that some of the scientists on the project are unscrupulous and mercenary themselves (really?), that the chimpanzees are capable of moral acts, that her husband’s suicide which more or less drove her to Africa remains a mystery, and that…. the most important lesson, life goes on even in Brazzaville Beach.
William Boyd
The writing is assured; the touch is light; the themes are serious as they slowly emerge. The context is richly detailed. Altogether a good book. William Boyd has others and I might read another one day but I will not make it a priority, because I thought this one had too many themes and circumstances competing for my thin attention. Once again, I seem to be in a minority because the back cover is plastered with testimonials from the highest sources like the ’New York Times.’
The title caught my eye because Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo was where Charles De Gaulle made his second radio broadcast, this one to the French colonies. There was a large transmitter in Brazzaville, built in the 1930s to reach the African colonies and even some air and naval traffic. De Gaulle traveled there in 1940 to win supporters, and met with some success.
‘The Spinoza Problem: a Novel’ ( 2012) by Irvin Yalom
The setting in 17th Century Amsterdam shows assiduous research and the differentiation of characters is good, as far as I can tell. On that qualification there will be more later.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) repays effort. The first is with his name. He was born Benedito de Espinosa of Portuguese parents who had moved overnight to Amsterdam to avoid the convert-or-die (later) Iberian Inquisition. (Why does Ted Cruz come to mind?) The parenthetical reference ‘later’ applies because even Jews who willingly converted to Catholicism were subjected to subsequent persecution. In Holland he was sometimes styled Benedict. In all those permutations his first name means ‘Blessed.’
That qualification ‘as far I can tell’ means I stopped reading the book very early. I violate my rule of the positive in this case because I wanted to express my admiration for Spinoza the thinker. In addition his reputation as a man has come down the ages as a simple, unpretentious person, whose life was a model of rectitude, in contrast to the wastrel Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the gloom-and-doom merchant Thomas Hobbes, the obnoxious self-promoter John Locke, or the nutter John Stuart Mill.
Spinoza’s two tracts, the ‘Politics’ and the ‘Ethics’ are fine books, though arid. He much admired the method of geometric reasoning. Yet somehow he is not on the starting team in the Tour of Political Theory, so I only ever managed to slip the ‘Politics’ onto the syllabus once many years ago. Ditto his fellow Dutchman Hugo de Grotius.
‘The Spinoza Problem: a Novel’ is described as a thriller, and I should have stopped there. The lure of Spinoza was, however, too much; I bought it and started to read. The book has two characteristics that I dislike so much that I gave up on Spinoza.
First, everything is written in the present tense, including flashbacks. Ergo everything is happening at once.
Second, this simultaneous action occurs across the centuries because every other chapter alternates from Spinoza’s time in the 17th Century and the 20th Century. I like my krimis linear and literal.
The early scene with the schoolboy Alfred Rosenberg (look him up, if he is unknown) getting a lesson in life at his Estonia high school is certainly interesting, and sheds some light on anti-Semitism. I wish I had been able to persist,,,, (However, there are so many other, good books that do not set my teeth on edge.)
The use of the present tense is so common I suspect it is advised by agents and perhaps required by publishers, at least, of certain genres. That is, the thriller. Why do I react to it?
When everything is happening at once, it is left to the reader to sort out sequence, to distinguish past from present, and to supply the emphasis and the pace of events, and even to supply the viewpoint. It is like looking at two-dimensional flat world without topography and without time. See, it is lazy writing making the reader do the work that the writer should have done. Stephen King would have a zinger on this. Verb tenses are tools, and should be put to work. That is why they exist.
Not everyone is bothered by ahistorical simultaneity, it seems, because the book is published by a major New York publisher and has a good rating on Good Reads, for whatever that is worth. (I never cease to marvel at the illiterate accolades heaped on some dreadful specimens. Why did Donald Trump come to mind?)
Irvin Yalom
Confession: I was also irked by a lengthy introduction from the author about his many and deep interests. If that has to be present, put it at the back. In any event, I skipped it, something I was taught to do in college literature classes so as to make up my own mind. That I did.
‘Lanterne Rouge’ (2013 ) by Max Leonard
Lanterne Rouge? Yes, it can be the red light on the last car in railway train, in the dark there to let yardmen, roustabouts, and switchers know that is the final car. It can indicate a doctor’s late night surgery in some countries, and…., well, you know. (I only know from movies.)
In this case, none of the above!
The Lanterne Rouge is the last rider to finish the Tour de France, and Max Leonard, himself a cyclist, wondered how those losers felt about being last.
I am glad he did, because their lives, races, and attitudes are varied, intriguing, and represent much of the Tour de France at its best and at its worst. Moreover, Leonard has a light touch with self-deprecating humour, as he rides them down.
Perhaps the most important point made is that to finish last in the Tour de France is not losing!
Counter-intuitive, but true all the same.
When one Spanish rider was asked by a boneheaded journalist, is there any other kind, how he felt about finishing last, this was his reply: ‘One hundred and ninety-eight riders from the cream of world cycling started the Tour and I finished (stress, finished) at 120.’
Explanation: Seventy-eight others did not finish, but he did. To do so he had to make the time cutoff each day to stay in the race, not easy that, period. He coped with mechanical breakdowns and stayed in the race. He managed injuries from falls and stayed in the race. All the while he performed his role on the team, carrying water bottles for others and pacing the sprinter. He climbed the mountains in the Pyrenees and the Alps, endured the individual and team time trials, pedalled the long flats, and coped with the weather. Hard. Hard. Hard.
It is a theme that recurs. Finishing is itself a triumph, over the elements, over the odds, and over one’s own weakness, capped by a roll down the Champs Elysee with family and friends on the sidelines among the 100,000 spectators and millions more on television!
Sometimes it is a triumph over injury, as one Lanterne Rouge rode the last eight days in a neck brace, others with enough stitches to bring tears to one’s eyes. All of them overcame the inner voice that urged them to quit on the slope of L’Alpe d’Huez, half-way through a 60-kilometer time trial, while riding last through a parallel rain storm off the Atlantic, or on a hairpin-turn descent. For many it was the dream of lifetime fulfilled to ride in the Tour and to finish. Period.
Further proof, be it needed, is in the person of Jack Durand, who finished last and yet stood on the winner’s podium on the Champs Elysee! Huh? He was awarded the medal for the Most Competitive Rider.
Through the three weeks of the Tour he led one attack after another, on climbs, in the flat, against the wind, through tunnels, often alone. On some days he led the field for a 50 kilometres. Some of breakaways produced a gap of 12 minutes. Some days he pedalled quietly in the peloton. He was unpredictable and explosive. His post mortem was this: ‘Everyday I ride to win. Against such champions as gathered for this race, I have to beat them mentally with breakaways.’ Indeed he did win a stage in that tour.
Then there is Phillipe Gaumont who became a (barely) riding chemistry laboratory. He surrendered to Dr Alchemy, and rode on Belgian Pot, a concoction of cocaine, blood stimulants, and anything else lying around the laboratory. As he slowed down, he took more needles, the syringes taped to his ankles inside his socks. The effect was curvilinear, at first he was stronger, then he plateaued, and then he slowed, as he slowed, he shot up ever more drugs in the hope of regaining speed, but instead that slowed him down even more and he could barely finish. Thereafter he broke down, and shortly thereafter told all in a memoir. He died at 44, surely the chemical soup hastened the end.
Max Leonard
These stories illustrate the material. In its one hundred editions, there has always been a Lanterne Rouge, and there are more of their stories in the book. There are many ways to be a lantern rouge in life and it does not mean being a loser. There is a moral in there somewhere.
‘Entanglement’ (2010 ) by Zygmunt Miloszewski
This in a police procedural in a series following the investigations of Polish State Prosecutor Teo Szacki. In Poland, according to this novel, the prosecutor does the investigating, and not the police whose domain includes the heavy lifting and car chasing. The locale is Warsaw with its nouveau riche and old communists side by side. It is part of series.
A middle aged man in mid-career is found dead in a church, a shish-kabob skewer stuck through his eye. He was participating in a role-playing therapy group using rooms in the church. Between sessions he was murdered. Did someone take the role playing too seriously! Was there an intruder? Did the victim have an enemy who followed him there? Did he — somehow — commit suicide with that skewer?
Most of the role-playing was videoed and much of the early going is Szacki watching it with the therapist who explains the proceedings, while more than once, Szacki thinks about his own life and his own need for…something, perhaps even therapy. The theoretical explanation of the procedure seems incredible [no spoiler] but it hangs together (and adds to the mystery, which is often lacking in krimis.) In addition, the victim also recorded some of his musings on a pocket recorder, and these, when discovered, add to the incredibility of it all, because he seems at one point to be talking to a ghost.
The more Szacki digs, the more confusing and paranormal it seems to become. This mystery is not welcome to a man who lives on and for facts.
Warsaw is new to me and I enjoyed the to’ing and fro’ing around the city in the summer rain. The banter between colleagues in the prosecutor’s office, the lack of a budget for even basic tests, the vulture journalists looking for blood, the boom-and-bust all at once nature of contemporary Poland while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the role-playing therapy, these are all well handled and add layers to the narrative texture.
Zygmunt Miloszewski
There is a plot wobble for this reader. Szacki seeks a second professional opinion on the therapy session and that confirms the procedure, but later…. Well, no spoiler but the curve disappointed this reader.
While the author distinguishes the characters, as always with such unfamiliar names, I found keeping the names and the individuals straight difficult. Though I consumed those dark, depressing, and dispiriting Russian novels that were de rigueur in college, I could never keep the names straight then either.
The translation and presentation on the Kindle are good. The production is far better than for the other Polish krimi I recently discussed, ‘Polychrome.’
Brexit
Bexit? Sure, why not? It is bound to be the solution to all problems, since none are homemade in Britain. rright?
Here is one prophecy.
The United Kingdom leaves the European Union.
Thereafter Scotland achieves sovereignty and leaves the United Kingdom to join the European Union.
Not to be left behind, Wales does the same.
Northern Ireland? Surely it would be next.
The result will be Little England.
But not for long, because the rustbelt in the north will consider seceding, so as to join the European Union.
It will then be Littler England. And a new flag will have to be designed.
Why context counts. Edward T. Hall, ‘Beyond Culture’ (1976)
The distinction between High and Low Context is a valuable tool. It can be applied at many levels to social interactions. I fastened on to this distinction because it explains much about the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli. He was a high context writer. That is one reason why I bristle when I see his themes applied to … well almost anything since his death.
To illustrate in broad, within a nuclear family speech is often cryptic, because both speaker and auditor are entwined in the same context which itself communicates much through the accumulation of experience.
When Kate says, ‘It’s Thursday,’ I know she means it is time to put the wheeled bins of recycling and rubbish on the street to be emptied early on Friday morning. She does have to say, ‘It is time to wheel out of the garage the red-lidded and yellow-lidded bins, one at a time, because it is tight squeeze past the car, to the front of the house near the curb facing backward for the mechanical arm to lift onto the bracket on the truck…..’ Her shorthand is very clear to me, but has been incomprehensible to house guests.
Some years ago we prepared a manual for house-sitters who move in while we travel, and in writing and illustrating that manual we assumed low context, and explained and spelled everything out from the location of spare light bulbs, to the vagaries of Wi-Fi, to the operation of the garage door, the use of Netflix, the way the lock works on the back gate, to the nights when the bins have to go out, and so on and on. The manual will soon be a multi-volume work because, lacking context, it is explicit and detailed about everything.
For those still not convinced that context matters, consider the array of remoters that lie around the tele, video, and music devices at home. Their use and interaction has been learned by users, but is far from obvious to a neophyte. While I can operate our system, barely, there is no chance I can do so with someone else’s without guidance, instruction, or a manual.
More generally, in the state of Nebraska everyone is a Huskers football fan, most volunteers, some conscripted, and every Sunday with friends and family, and every Monday with colleagues, there is a postmortem of each Saturday’s game in the season. It may start with a remark like, ‘Thomson has got one powerful arm.’ The auditor is assumed to know whom Thomson is, what the reference is to, perhaps a sixty yard Hail Mary touchdown pass in the waning moments of the game, and more. Nebraskans will forgive outsiders for not knowing all of this context, but for one of their own not to know, worse, not to care, is beyond the pale.
This distinction between high and low context explains a lot about the natives described in Colin Turnbull’s ‘The Forest People’ (1961), one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. But when I read it, I did have this tool in mind. This is a book some may remember from the ‘Power’ course in days of yore. Time to read it again.
I see the same distinction between assumed context in philosophers. Some wrote for a wide audience and spelt out first principles, like Plato or John Locke. Others wrote for a known and limited audience and were cryptic like Georg Hegel writing text notes for his students. Others wrote for and to themselves, like Niccolò Machiavelli. Hegel and Machiavelli, in particular, are high context writers, while Locke and Plato are low context.
The chapter on this distinction is about ten pages long, and is to be found in the middle of this book. For me it is the most valuable part.
Much of the rest is punctuated with Hall’s asides on his personal experiences, his previous research projects, and even hearsay. Some may find these touches humane and interesting but this reader found them self-indulgent and padded. Hall is an anthropologist.
Edward T. Hall in 1966
Irony is never far away is it, Mr Spock? The author is a sensitive canary to the vibrations of all manner of cultures, remember those personal experiences, but he writes only of ‘man’ and ‘men.’ Even in 1976 that would have caught the eye.