European Travel: It's an Omelette Thing (part one)

by Tom Kando

This is the first installment of the account of our recent European trip - I hope you enjoy this travelogue:

International travel is marvelous. You have many exciting experiences, you see many beautiful things that are very different from the drudgery of everyday life. Also, many things are frustrating, incomprehensible, unreasonable, don’t work.

Recently, my wife Anita and I spent over a month in Europe. I first flew to Amsterdam, because my 101-year old mother lives in Holland, and I go there as often as I can to help her and be with her.
Then, Anita joins me and we tack on some tourism to my filial responsibilities. We usually go South for a few weeks, to France, Italy and so forth. Paris is often on our itinerary, because I grew up there, I still know people there, and a return to the City of Lights is always difficult to resist. Read more...

Golden Storks Forever

by Madeleine Kando

Alkmaar, Tuesday September 30, 2014

The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds today. I am looking up at a big old church, looming like a benevolent guardian over the numerous cafes lining the square in this typical Dutch town in North Holland. A snow-white pigeon is strutting back and forth between the tables, as if he just stepped out of a beauty parlor. Every quarter hour the church bells fill the air with their carillon, making sure we don't forget about the passing of time. This majestic building must feel humiliated; having harbored millions of souls in distress over the centuries, it is now reduced to the status of a common museum; its soul is gone, but its façade hasn't changed. On one of the high ledges, golden stork statues stare out onto the world, immobilized for eternity. They must envy the seagulls as they fly by with their shrill cawing: 'Come fly with us, come to the beautiful North Sea and fill your golden bellies with fish. Nothing will come of it, if you stay here, on this old church that has lost its glory.'

A lost balloon is rolling by my table, carried by the breeze. A black pigeon is watching it with detached curiosity, his head retracted but his beady eyes in constant motion, waiting for some crumbs. Read more...

The #Gaza Generation

by Madeleine Kando

After the latest Pro-Gaza demonstrations in Paris, the French left-wing newspaper 'Le Monde' published an article with the dramatic title 'A new generation #Gaza is born in the streets of France'. It is accompanied by a photo of an attractive female wrapped in a keffieh carefully draped around her head according to the latest fashion. There is no mention of the ugliness that surfaced in the form of numerous anti-semitic slogans, only a meticulous description of what the female demonstrators were wearing. In fact, this new fad, were it not so worrisome, is good for business; Palestinian, even ISIS flags are in great demand in Paris these days and shops have backorders of Arafat headscarves.

The young, clueless but not so innocent demonstrators, are not entirely responsible for their fanatic, one-sided view of the conflict. It is boosted by an anti-Israel bias in the French press so thick, you can cut it with a knife.** Read more...

Are Our Political Beliefs Hardwired into Us?

by Madeleine Kando

The terms 'left-right' in politics originated during the French Revolution when members of the National Assembly who were loyal to religion and the king stood to the right of president's chair, so as to avoid the shouts and insults that came from the opposite side, where the more revolutionary members took their seat.

There is nothing more guaranteed to create conflict than opposing political views, but as John Stuart Mills said: 'Having a party of order and stability and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.'

But what makes someone a 'leftist' or a 'rightist'? Is it something that you learn from your parents, like potty training? Do we acquire our political beliefs on our own? Or do we acquire them at birth, like the color of our hair? Is it the environment or the genes?

In "Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology," John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska argues that what makes conservatives conservative, is their heightened sensitivity to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in the environment. We all react to negative stimuli, which is a good thing, or we wouldn't have been able to survive as a species. Our ancestors didn't approach a saber-toothed tiger cooing 'nice kitty', but wisely followed their negative bias instinct and ran for their lives instead. Read more...

Story Connection: Dr. Tom Kando

AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM KANDO

Hi folks:

This is a You Tube video of an interview I had recently on Sacramento’s Access TV (Channel 17). The interview was part of the program “What’s Your Story.” The topic was  my autobiography.
Click on the title of this article.

Here are some of the things that were said:

“I was born in Budapest, Hungary,   at the beginning of World War II......my saga  is extraordinarily eventful and interesting. Sometimes I joke that my life conforms to the ancient Chinese curse that wishes you an interesting life...

...I have lived in four separate countries,  almost a decade in each, and traveled to another thirty. I speak four languages fluently and dabble in another couple. I have had an exceptionally international upbringing and background.
Read more...

Decimal and Metric

by Tom Kando

On August 5, National Public Radio had a skit on the fact that the US remains one of three countries in the world which don’t use the metric/decimal system (the other two are Liberia and Myanmar).

Maybe so. Of course, metric and decimal are not synonymous. This country IS decimal in many ways - starting with the dollar and our entire monetary system, thanks to Thomas Jefferson who at least pushed that through.

And by now, much of American science, medicine and commerce takes place decimally. Your meds are all measured in grams and milligrams, your primary care physician might record your weight in kilos, etc. But we are not metric. Nor are we decimal in our measurement of weight and temperature.

But I don’t want to nitpick how accurate or inaccurate the statement is that “the US is one of only three countries that remain non-metric/non-decimal.” Instead, I want to share with you some interesting thoughts about this subject:
Read more...

Killing the Innocent with Ignorance

by Madeleine Kando

In July, the Massachusetts Senate passed the Environmental Bond Bill which will help protect the State's natural resources, which is a good thing. The bad news is, that the bill also includes a provision to authorize deer culling (a euphemism for killing), large amounts of deer.

In Section 43 of the bill it states that 'the department shall identify areas in which deer overpopulation is negatively impacting forestation, water resources or plant growth on department-owned land. The department shall also consult with the department of public health regarding the prevalence of tick-borne illnesses as a result of deer overpopulation.'

Deer, however, while they are big animals, cannot browse on anything much above six feet, so they cannot prosper in deep mature woods with a dense canopy and no understory. Therefore deer can not 'negatively impact forestation', let alone water resources. How much can deer drink, really?'

As far as 'the prevalence of tick-borne illnesses as a result of deer overpopulation,' the members of the Senate responsible for drafting Section 43 of the bill should have done their homework before sneaking it in. Read more...

The Gestapo of Political Correctness

by Madeleine Kando

I met the Gestapo yesterday. I barely had time to sit down at the table in our usual meeting place, ready to share a short essay with my writing group, when, without a word of warning, my hands were cuffed tight to my chair and the Gestapo of Political Correctness came out and started to drill me.

I was drilled for hours. When one member of the crew got tired, another one took over. I started to sweat and my heart was racing. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was being accused of because my essay was about elves and Christmas. Should I have referred to the elves in my story as ‘vertically challenged individuals?’ or called Christmas ‘the winter solstice holiday, practiced with respect for the religious persuasion of others?’

But the Gestapo let those two pecadilloes slide. It was a lot worse, one of the interrogators told me, as he pushed his face into mine. With an accusatory finger he pointed to the third paragraph, where, I confess, I did mention Zwarte Piet, in the context of the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas.

If you are not familiar with the Sinterklaas tradition, let me explain. Every year, on December 5th, a bishop by the name of Sinterklaas arrives on the beautiful shores of Holland from Spain. He sits on a white horse, a large mitre on his head and a bishop's staff in his white gloved hand, to give out candy to the enthusiastically waving Dutch children. This bishop also has a helper by the name of Zwarte Piet who holds the bulging bag full of candy. Piet is also instructed to clairvoyantly seek out those children who have been naughty and work them over with a birch twig. If they are really really bad, he stuffs the unfortunate ones in a canvas bag that gets shipped back to Spain. Read more...

Israel vs. Palestine, Redux

by Tom Kando

Again and again. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is forever. It has raged since before I was born, and it will not be solved by the time my grandchildren are gone. To paraphrase Dennis Quaid when he played the president of the United States in American Dreamz, the Israel-Palestine problem will NEVER be solved.

The latest war, which pits Israel against the Hamas wing of the Palestinians, was triggered by the murder of three Jewish kids, which led to the reprisal murder of a Palestinian kid, followed by a great increase in Hamas rockets raining down on Israel, and thereupon Israel’s bombing campaign and invasion of Gaza.

Here is a list of some of the issues about which people have been taking sides forever, ad nauseam. A similar article was written by Ali Rizvi on the Huffington Post recently, titled “7 Things to Consider Before Choosing Sides in the Middle East Conflict.”

The case against Israel:

1. The “asymmetrical” number of deaths: Over 1300 Palestinians so far, of whom 75% are women, children and other innocent civilians. About 60 Israelis, of whom 2 or 3 are civilians.

2. Israel practices Apartheid. Palestinians within Israel are second-class citizens, and many of those outside its borders have been living in subhuman conditions for over 60 years.
Read more...

From Paris to Lodi

by Tom Kando

On Sunday July 27, I watched the final stage of the Tour de France. The race’s arrival in Paris, where they ride eight laps up and down the Champs-Elysées, around the Arch of Triumph, across the Place de la Concorde, down the Rue de Rivoli, by the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens. Fabulous!

It’s a scientific fact: Paris is the world’s most beautiful city. When I lived there, my high school teacher Madame Louvain said so. At that time, I thought, “Oh sure, that’s what teachers tell their students in Omaha, in Shanghai and in  Saint Louis also. But now I realize that Madame Louvain was right. The matter  is not debatable.

My life’s trajectory has been as follows: From Paris, I moved to Amsterdam, then on to Minneapolis, and finally to Sacramento. A straight-line descent, no doubt about it. Will my next stop be Lodi - the town immortalized by Creedence Clearwater Revival?

I was fourteen  when my family and I  left the City of Lights. It was my parents’ decision to move. I cried. I spent my next ten years in Amsterdam, which is nothing to sneeze at either. It’s a fine, groovy town. Amsterdam really swings, but it ain’t  Paris. Read more...