My Invisible Neighbor

By Madeleine Kando

I am lying on a gurney, waiting to be prepped for an abdominal exam. Dark green curtains hide the rest of this sterile hospital space. I am freezing. I wait, curled up like a cocoon inside some heated blankets that the nurse gave me. The vinyl floor reflects the harsh overhead light. I wait. I am a patiently waiting patient.

Suddenly, a loud voice pierces the air. A nurse slides the curtain open around the adjacent cubicle. With a heavy foreign accent, she begins the intake procedure. My neighbor slurs her speech, as if she just woke up. She sounds old.

Judging by the ensuing questions, she must be here for a colonoscopy.

‘When was the last time you drank, Maam?’ asks the nurse.

‘I drank a gallon of liquid. That was a week ago and nothing happened. I couldn’t move my bowels. They sent me home because it was the wrong day. So this time I did the prep and things started two days after the prep. Nothing but diarrhea'.

‘Oh, wow. But what time did you drink TODAY?
‘Before seven thirty in the morning.’
‘What time did you have anything to eat, like bread or anything’?
‘Nothing.’

The nurse coughs profusely. ‘I hope you are not sick’ says my neighbor.
‘No I am alergic to my cat. Do you have any pain?’
‘Oh yes’
‘Where?’
‘In my head, I have a headache. I fell and I have a headache. And in my belly. Especially when I have to move my bowels. It feels like I am going to burst, but nothing comes out. Maybe a little piece, maybe this size.’

More coughing: ‘Tell me about your teeth can you open your mouth for me?’

‘Very bad. I had some surgery done.’
‘Any loose teeth?
‘Nothing. I don’t have any up here. This one was pulled three months ago and now there are all kinds of growths inside my mouth.’

The questions keep coming. Some, she already answered. The nurse must have amnesia.

More questions. My neighbor starts to lose her patience. ‘Why don’t you look up my medical records, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you have a computer? Why all these questions? All I want is for someone to look up my ass!’

My neighbor now embarks on a lengthy monologue. Is she still talking to the nurse? But the nurse already left. Now, nothing can stop her. She tells the hospital air how she survived the Holocaust, how she had been a Flamenco dancer and had lived in Israel. She owned a cab company called ABC. She goes on telling nobody and everybody her entire life’s story. Probably all invented. Read more...

America Must Raise Taxes

Tom Kando 

Congress was at it again: It was having difficulty passing a budget on time, thereby threatening to shut down the government. 

This now occurs every other month or so. It is one of the many aspects of our dysfunctional government. The problem is simple and obvious: Republicans want small government and low taxes. Democrats want the government to provide services for the people - you know, things like education, infrastructure, public health, medical insurance, police, defense, etc. Republicans prefer that you keep as much of your earnings as possible and that you hand over to the government as little of it as possible. A majority of Americans agree with this. Therefore any candidate who dares to suggest raising taxes is committing political suicide. 

During the Reagan era, there even arose an economic theory which argued that CUTTING tax rates would INCREASE the government’s tax intake. The theory became quite popular. It was called the LAFFER CURVE, after its progenitor Arthur Laffer. The man’s reasoning was that lower taxes incentivize workers to work more and earn more, and businessmen to invest productively rather than to shelter their profits unproductively or hide them in off-shore tax havens. This theory has long been debunked by most economists, including Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, some calling it the “laughter curve.” yet it retains many adherents among conservatives. 

The Republicans’ never-ending efforts to minimize taxes also include their current campaign against increasing the IRS in order to maximize tax audits and minimize tax cheating. Tax under reporting and underpayment cost the government several dozen billion dollars every year. 

Understandably, even Democrats are loath to advocate raising taxes. 

Yet, there approaches a time when this will be absolutely inevitable. Here are some facts (See for example What is the National Deficit ).

For the past twenty-two years, the federal government has been spending more than it has been taking in. Its budget was last in the black in 2001, when Clinton was president. 

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Israel

Tom Kando    

(References in this piece are to David Remnick’s article In the Cities of Killing published in the New Yorker on November 6, 2023) 

It has been over a month since Hamas’ attack ignited the current war and prompted Israel to retaliate with a vengeance. On October 7, Hamas invaded southern Israel and murdered fourteen hundred inhabitants of kibbutzim such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri and revelers at the Nova music festival. Babies were beheaded, parents were executed in front of their children, rape and other atrocities were committed. Over two hundred and forty hostages were taken, and remain in Hamas custody. Some of the civilian inhabitants of Northern Gaza followed the terrorists into Israel and participated in the slaughter and plunder. Hamas labeled the event the Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel calls it Black Saturday. History may remember it as October 7, as America remembers 9/11. 

Within a few days, Israel’s IDF began a bombing campaign against Gaza, a campaign of increasing ferocity. It told the one million Palestinians who live in Northern Gaza to evacuate the area, which was identified as the target area. In fact, all of Gaza became the target. Leaving the northern part to find safety elsewhere was an impossibility. Hence, hundreds of children, women and other non-combatants were killed every day, thousands every week. Entire neighborhoods were pulverized, including hospitals, refugee camps, shopping areas and residential housing.

Hamas and its supporters have vowed to destroy Israel. Its charter remains clear: Its basic goal is the total elimination of Israel, “”from the river to the sea.” Their ultimate ambition, as that of supporters such as Hezbollah and Iran, is the elimination of the “Zionist entity.”  In 2001, a founder of Hamas said that “the goal is to establish an Islamic state in Palestine, in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, everywhere, under a single Caliphate...we will not tolerate a non-Islamic state on Islamic lands.” (P.33). 

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The Great Eyeglasses Rip off

By Madeleine Kando

After procrastinating for years, I finally got my new prescription for glasses. My current glasses are at least 10 years old and I had forgotten how expensive and time-consuming it is to buy new classes.

For someone who cannot even decide on which leg to get out of bed, the choice of frames is overwhelming. Besides, trying on frames is an exercise in futility since all you see is a blurred self in the mirror.

I finally selected a frame in the midrange. But frames are not much use without lenses and those make up the bulk of the cost. I finally settled on a pair of Flexon, high-index, anti-glare titanium glasses and went home with a $500 hole in my pocket.

Barely out of the door, the thought of having paid a small fortune for 3 pieces of plastic stuck together with screws that I knew doesn't cost more than $20 to produce, gave me a severe case of indigestion . I returned them the next day.

I figured there was enough juice left in my 10-year-old glasses to research why the industry puts a 1000% markup on their glasses. Especially for something that should be fully covered by insurance, like high blood pressure medication.

The reason is simple: the eyewear industry is a near-monopoly, dominated by an Italian/French company called ‘Essilor Luxottica’.

It was founded in 1961 by Leonardo Del Vecchio. The company owns the biggest retail chains, such as LensCrafters and Sunglass Hut, and controls over 80% of the major eyewear brands, including Ray-Ban, Oakley and Vogue Eyewear. Without competition, this company keeps the prices so high that it bears no relation to reality.  It even owns Eyemed, the biggest eye insurance provider in the world. So, you see quite a big party! Read more...

Is Holland the next Anglo Country?

Tom Kando 

I just returned from the Netherlands. 

We were nearly two weeks in that lovely country. It was delightful. We spent most of our time visiting with relatives and good old friends whom we had not seen in years. We enjoyed excellent Dutch cuisine, including many varieties of cheese and my favorite appetizers: herring and Carpaccio. There were concerts (Bach’s Brandenburg concertos), boat rides through the Amsterdam canals, strolling on the beach, lounging around sidewalk cafés and more. My wife Anita keeps saying: “Europeans are a café society. Why can’t Americans be more like that?” 

However, I discovered something quite odd, something that shocked me: I have long admired the Dutch for being brilliantly multi-lingual. A large majority of them are fluent in English, among other languages. This is quite convenient for American visitors. However, over the past couple of decades, the country’s entire higher education system has become Anglicized. Today, a majority of the curriculum at most Dutch universities is taught in English. I had no idea. 

I grew up in the Netherlands, I received my Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam. I am still fluent in Dutch.

My discovery that Dutch higher education is now largely in English was fortuitous. We met a nice and very intelligent young American who is a student at the University of Groningen. He has been in Holland for several months, but he still hardly speaks a word of Dutch. I asked him how he manages to attend a Dutch university. No problem, he said, since all his classes are in English. 

This floored me. I learned from further conversation and some superficial research that a majority of university courses in the Netherlands are now taught in English. (see for example Dutch Universities Teach in English and Best English-Taught Universities in the Netherlands)

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The Anti-Israel Left

By Madeleine Kando

On October 7 2023, the terrorist group Hamas butchered 260 young music lovers at the Supernova Music Festival Negev Desert. They left 1,200 Israelis dead and 2,800 more wounded. Clearly they had ‘kill as many as you can’ on their mind.

The sheer brutality of it all left me breathless. The next day, there were pro-Palestinian and left wing groups celebrating that atrocity. In Manhattan, in London, at Harvard University and other campuses, the chant was: “the Israeli regime is entirely responsible for the violence’.

I spoke to some neighbors, trying to make sense of what just happened, the sheer brutality of the attack. What I heard was ‘It’s terrible, yes, but what about the poor Palestinians?’

It almost seemed like a brainwashed response. I am a liberal and so is most of my neighborhood, but can liberals not call a spade a spade? Can they not see beyond their binary worldview of the oppressors versus the oppressed? I am all for the underdog myself, but mass murder should not be condoned by blaming Israel for imposing an “apartheid” regime on Palestinians. That response requires a much more detailed knowledge of the long lasting Palestinian/Israeli conflict, than my liberal neighbors have. Read more...

Moral Equivalence between Russia and Ukraine?

Tom Kando

I still watch the news and I still read the newspaper every day. This is a bad habit. The news is repetitive and depressing. The major progressive channels (CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, etc.) devote most of the time to Donald Trump and the lawsuits against him, ad nauseam. Overseas, the Ukraine war remains a main topic, with no end in sight. 

The Ukrainian situation bothers me a great deal. 

Maybe it’s because I come from Eastern Europe. Maybe because I spent the first decade of my life in a war not unlike the current bloodbath in Ukraine, and its aftermath. Maybe because Russia was doing to Hungary, my country of birth, the same thing it is doing to Ukraine now: raping it. 

Russia started its unprovoked attack on its peaceful neighbor in February 2014, when it conquered Crimea. It resumed its invasion in February 2022, attempting to annex the entire country, an effort that goes on unabated. 

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When the current assault began over a year and a half ago, the media were able to document clearly that Russia’s behavior was as unprovoked, unjustified and cruel as Hitler’s assaults upon Germany’s neighbors had been at the outset of World War Two. We saw on television entire cities pulverized, thousands of women, children and other innocents killed, millions of Ukrainians forced to flee from their country, farcical elections held by Russia, attempting to legitimize the annexation of territories, the deportation of Ukrainian children to re-education locations in Russia.

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The Trouble with Second Hand Fame

By Madeleine Kando

I am not famous, but my parents were. They were not in the super-famous category, just the local run-of-the-mill famous, like your mayor or the neighborhood idiot. My stepfather actually is the more famous of the two. He was a photographer who made it really big posthumously. You can find him all over the Internet, which is the litmus test of being famous.

Fame doesn’t drop on your head like bird pooh, you know. You have to prime your own fame while you are alive and convince others that you are special, but it’s really the people you don’t know personally that do the real work. The more people there are you don’t know but who know you, the more famous you become. And it’s mostly the post-humous crowd that makes you famous. ‘Oh, I didn’t know her personally, but she was really a great person. So talented!’

It’s called the ‘fame by proxy' syndrome. Knowing a famous person, or just watching them drive by in a limousine, makes you feel special. There is this irresistible rubbing-off effect that people crave: to bask in a famous person’s spotlight.

We all need recognition, proof that we somehow matter. We all matter to ourselves of course, because we are all the center of the Universe. But you cannot take credit for just being, although you might argue that being born already makes you special. Of the billions of sperms competing in the race towards the ovum, the one that made you win the race.

Above and beyond just existing, we have a need to be recognized by others. Our family, our friends, our pets, and our jobs. We want to matter to others. Once you don’t matter anymore, you know it’s time to cut the cord.

The funny thing about fame is that it is a zero-sum game. For some to be famous, others must be ordinary. That’s how it works. While my famous parents were still alive, there was not much room for their children in their orbit. We were an afterthought, a fixture. ‘Oh, look at those cute children of these famous people we came to interview’. It gave a human touch to their fame.

Just the right amount, mind you. Since famous people are there for us to act out our fantasies, they shouldn’t become too real, or the fantasy is in danger of popping like a party balloon. People didn’t want to know about my famous mother’s suffering, as she grew older. Her incontinence, loss of vision and hearing. They didn’t want to know how she roamed the hallways of the assisted living in the middle of the night, trying to dull the agonizing nerve pain in her foot. And she didn’t want them to know how difficult it is to grow old. It was her secret, which she only shared with her children and a few close friends.

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The Limitations of ChatGPT

by Madeleine Kando

I have a thought, which I want to convey to my Dutch friend. English is my language of choice, but then he asks me to say it in Dutch. I grew up in Holland, so you would think it wouldn't be such a difficult task. I find myself grappling for words, trying to construct logical sentences that mirror what I think. I feel like an arthritic contortionist. It doesn't meet my expectations but that's the best I can do. 'I could say this a lot better in English, you know' I tell him.

The same goes for French, another language I grew up with. French sounds melodious and the way it is constructed has a poetic aura about it as if a bunch of poets sat down and selected the most pleasant-sounding bits of human speech to form the French language. (German, tragically, suffers from an abundance of harsh phonemes, as if they were forged by a group of rough warriors who made their enemies run for cover, every time they opened their mouth). But is language the best conduit for the multi-dimensionality of our mental world? I have to transpose something that is happening on multiple levels into one linear dimension. A thought is not just verbal; it has colors, shape, smell, taste, speed and much more.

Wouldn’t it be truer to reality if we had a means of communication that includes all these dimensions in one package? True, we have art, music, dance and mathematics to convey these other dimensions of thought, but doesn’t their own range also limit those? Can I do justice to quantum mechanics when I express it in music? Can I express the beauty of a sunrise using mathematics?

The current rage is all about chatbots and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can have a conversation with a user in natural language. They can also debug computer programs, compose music, generate business ideas and play games.

But isn’t AI forcing our way of thinking into a one-dimensional ‘verbal’ groove? What about the other major component of communication, i.e. the nonverbal part? There is body language, facial expressions and the tone of your voice, the melody of language, the pauses, hesitations and intonations. All of these contain a huge amount of information, which can drastically alter the verbal content of what is said. If we become enamored with the simplicity and one-dimensionality of chatbots (the spoken word), much of our humanness is at risk of disappearing. Read more...

Size Matters

Tom Kando

What is the most universal form of discrimination and victimization? Has it ever occurred to you? 

We talk forever about race, ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ, physical handicap, religion, age, obesity, etc. 

But what about SIZE? What about being small? (as well as soft-spoken, which often goes with it)? 

At five foot eleven, I am average. (At my advanced age, I have shrunk about an inch). 

But I have lived in places where I was on the smallish side compared to most other men, and places where my height was average. And you know what? I had a worse time when I lived in places where I was surrounded by many people taller than me - in Holland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania - than when I lived in places like France and California, where I was of average height. 

Say for instance that you go to a bar. You have to wade through a crowd towards the bar to order a drink. This is more annoying in Amsterdam and in Minneapolis than in Sacramento and in Paris. Same difference at airports, subways and other public settings. 

For men especially, size matters. 

Most US presidents have been taller than average. Trump is six foot three, which will be an electoral advantage.  Obama is six foot one - plus a stentorian baritone voice. These things work in his favor. Clinton was six foot two. The last seven US presidents have all been at least six foot tall.  Read more...