The History of Food Revealed

by Madeleine Kando

A 1999 BBC series on the origins of pornography inspired me to write a spoof. Rather than take sex as the subject however, I decided to replace it with food.

Before the 'Great Obesity Epidemic' of the late twenty-first century, when millions of people died from overeating, food and the consumption of food were a very inoffensive, daily activity that people engaged in without any shame or secrecy.

In previous decades it was customary to eat when one was hungry. There were even special places where groups of friends, husbands and wives, children and parents, sat together at a table and ate food, right in front of each other, there in public! These places were called 'restaurants'.

Before the 'Big OB-epidemic.', food was not considered taboo. But when more and more people became the victims of overeating, when women lost their ability to become pregnant and men became impotent, the government HAD to take steps to save our society from destroying itself.

Slowly, food consumption came to be seen as unnatural, something that was best practiced in secret.

Congress first passed the 'food obscenity' law, legislature that prohibited any kind of graphic display of food in public places. The second law prohibited parents from eating in front of their children. Many couples were denounced by their neighbors and faced severe prison sentences.

Soon, other laws followed: eating in public was deemed offensive and common decency required that any activity involving food consumption, talking about food and showing pictures of food be restricted to the privacy of one's home.

Believe it or not, but the expression 'May God curse you with a voracious appetite' did not exist before then. Other profanities, such as 'suck you' or 'eat cake' are fairly recent as well.

Black market trafficking of 'food-ography' (pictures of people eating together and other lurid depictions of food-related subjects) became a profitable business and people who could afford it joined secret societies where all manner of food perversion was the order of the day: strippers stepping out of giant cakes, food fights, movie showings of how food was produced and worst of all, members engaged in food orgies where they ate at nauseam and regurgitated their food in order to eat more.

As might be expected, all of this repression had the opposite effect of what was intended. Children who innocently walked to school were harassed by individuals who exposed themselves eating cake. The papers were full of articles about food voyeurs who had been caught in the act of looking at pictures of food. Some individuals developed severe cases of food fetishism for which they needed special psychiatric treatment. Virtual labs were developed where one could experience all the pleasures of eating without ingesting a crumb.

Soon there was so much censored, underground material available, on the internet, in chat rooms, on video, that people cut their workday short in order to secretly eat while watching movies about food.

People started to gain more weight than ever before. The simple pleasure of only eating when one was hungry had been lost, seemingly forever.

The Y.U.M. organization (Young, United and Mad) lobbied Congress to repeal the anti-food laws and eventually won. The circle was closed. Food slowly became a part of life again.

Some people still like to abuse food and occasionally succumb to the pleasure of eating in secret, but in general this period was a wake-up call for most of us. Who knows, maybe some day we will be able to let go of our inhibition and enjoy each other's company while eating in those quaint places called 'Restaurants'.

When tempted to eat in secret, repeat the mantra: ‘food is food is food is food..’ and don’t stop until the urge has passed. leave comment here Read more...

Infrastructure

by Madeleine Kando

I just returned from The Netherlands, which usually causes me to go through ‘road-shock’. The roads are so unblemished over there that falling asleep at the wheel is the highest hazard of driving. I had gotten used to the smooth asphalt of the Dutch highways.

On my drive back home from Logan Airport it felt like our car had entered a giant pinball machine. We were dodging potholes and cracks left and right, while trying to maintain an appropriate speed. Many of the signs had pieces missing and the lettering had peeled off which makes it hard to know where you are. But when I saw the familiar ‘No -assing’ sign on Lexington Street I knew I was home.

I remember a time when the American highway system was the envy of the world. I used to watch Hollywood car-chase movies in my small Amsterdam apartment with areal views of the typical four-leaf clover and six-story highway exchanges. It was still a sight to behold, a symbol of what American engineering could accomplish.

Since then, American roads and byways have turned into one of this country's worst nightmares. Being rated number one in the 1960's, America now ranks 23rd in quality of road infrastructure, somewhere between Spain and Chile.

The question is why? Why is America's transportation system so bad? Doesn't the sheer size of the US call exactly for that kind of investment?

For the past 30 years America's roads and bridges have been left to rot while smarter nations have been building, improving and maintaining their roads, bridges and canals. Since the 1970’s America has gone from spending 5% of GDP on infrastructure to only 2.4%. China spends 9% of GDP.

Although we complain about gas prices being so high, Europeans pay much higher taxes on cars and gasoline. Funding for transportation projects comes from the European Investment Bank, a non-profit organization whose shareholders are the member states. This allows the different EU countries to get cheap loans for their projects. The Kerry/Hutchison plan tries to create a similar funding apparatus and hopefully will pass the house. But I am not hopeful. Simply put, Americans are not willing to pay for an improved road infrastructure.

Compared to many other nations, high-speed trains are practically non-existent in the United States. China, which is about the same size as the United States is spending $50 billion this year alone on a speed train system that will travel at 220 mph. Compare that to the $8 billion that Obama proposed which, of course, went nowhere. The current infrastructure would not even permit bullet trains to go at fast speeds over bridges and through tunnels that are currently in such need of repair.

Another very obvious reason why our infrastructure is crumbling is the way projects are run these days. It took a little more than one year to build the Empire State building and only four years to build the entire Golden Gate Bridge. Compare that to the little overpass over interstate 95 in Waltham which has been under consruction since 2004 and still isn't completed.

What happened to the America that I admire? The innovative and efficient nation that everybody else looked up to? Bickering continues in Washington and there is a clear lack of vision. Like an old woman sloshing around the house in her slippers and robe, America doesn’t bother to take care of herself any more. She lets herself go. Future generations be damned.

Some of this information is found in an article in the Economist of April 28th, 'Life in the Fast Lane'
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The DSK Affair

by Madeleine Kando

I have been following the recent 'DSK affair' with fascination. The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested on charges of attempted rape of a hotel maid in his New York hotel, is now held without bail at the Riker's Island prison, nicknamed 'the tomb'.

The French are shocked at pictures showing Strauss-Kahn, handcuffed and unshaved, forced to take the 'perp walk', a tradition of making a suspect walk by a row of media cameras.

Jack Lang, former French Minister of Culture and a good friend of Strauss-Kahn, is quoted as saying: 'The American Justice system is an inhuman system that crushes the individual that falls between its hands.' (translation is mine, sorry). And 'Nothing justifies a man being treated with such disdain and violence. Knowing the American justice system, it is not unimaginable that the judge is after smearing 'a Frenchman'.

Well, maybe French politicians could use a dose of healthy smearing. It's not like Strauss-Kahn is innocent of previous acts of sexual misconduct. For example, when Tristane Banon, a French journalist was allegedly sexually assaulted by him back in 2002, she wanted to file charges. But her own mother, Anne Mansouret, who is an important figure in the socialist movement, advised her NOT to. As a senior sociaiist figure she felt that Strauss-Kahn was too important and didn't want his name tarnished.

France, it seems, has very strong libel and privacy laws which allows public figures to reap the benefits of being public without bearing the consequences of misbehaving privately. In other words the French like to have their cake and eat it too.

It sounds like they are still stuck with their old, aristocratic moral code. The rooster is still king in the chicken coop. But the American justice system doesn't go for that kind of preferential treatment. Rich or poor, famous or obscure, it makes no difference.

Strauss-Kahn sounds like an arrogant, oversexed individual at best and a sexual predator at worst. He didn't suddenly become that way in a New York hotel. He is 62 years old. All this time the French must have ignored that side of him, all in the name of their 'don't ask don't tell' philosophy. What does that say about the French?

They are fond of making fun of America's puritan attitude towards sexual misconduct. But when it comes to allegations of attempted rape, it's a different story. They might not agree with the treatment that Strauss-Kahn has undergone, but hopefully they are as shocked as I am at this man's behavior. leave comment here Read more...

A Taste of Emergency Health Care in Holland

by Madeleine Kando

I went to see my ninety-eight year-old mother-in-law in Holland last week. She lives in a small community called Mierlo where I usually drive around in circles for the good part of an hour trying to find her house in an endless maze of identical looking villas. While my Dutch sister-in-law, Lise and I were shopping for dinner, her cell phone rang. It was 'Oma' who said that she had just fallen and hurt her arm. Lise was quite calm about it, asked her if it was serious and that we were coming back to see.

Oma was in a chair holding her right arm which she had wrapped in a towel. A large piece of skin had been scraped off when she fell and her arm looked like a raw, bloody piece of sirloin. Lise immediately called the local hospital. Since the emergency room there was closing at five (the Dutch are very particular about not working after five), they referred her to the hospital in the next town over, which was only a ten-minute drive. (that's the nice part about Holland, it’s so small that everything is pretty much accessible, like on the Little Prince's planet.).

She made an appointment for us to arrive there at six. This is was the first of many surprises in the Dutch 'emergency health care' system. You don't just rush to the emergency room unannounced. You call, tell them what time you will be coming and there will be someone there to expect you.

We drove to Geldrop, parked the car in the 'emergency room' parking lot and walked in. We waited about twenty minutes and a tall, young and very handsome doctor came out. We all followed him into the treatment room like little ducklings following the daddy duck. He had a trainee in there that was just as young, tall and handsome. It made me doubt my previously held opinion that Dutch men aren't the best looking breed in the world. Maybe Dutch medical schools screen for looks as well?

Anyway, he was incredibly charming, efficient and had none of the pedantic style that often comes with the territory. I was so impressed with the whole thing, I was just standing there in the corner, my mouth gaping. After he cleaned out the wound, I watched him put back the hanging flaps of skin with a small pair of tweezers, which an attending nurse had pulled out of the drawer. He neatly covered the raw piece of meat and explained that skin makes for a perfect band-aid. He didn't use penicillin, shots, ointments, disinfectant... nothing. He covered the whole area with two pieces of non-stick gauze, wrapped Oma's arm neatly with regular gauze and taped it together with what looked like scotch tape.

I couldn't help myself. I had to ask him about the penicillin. He was very clear on that subject. No, he would not use penicillin, even if it got infected (which he said it might), because he had very rarely seen this kind of wound become 'gangrenous'. (I guess they only use penicillin as a last resort here).

That was it. No fuss, no extra wrapping, no face masks, no medication..

He gave some instructions on how to take care of the wound: Oma's caregiver who comes to visit her every morning to keep an eye on her, (compliments of her socialized medicine health insurance package), should change the bandage every day and her primary care physician should make a house call twice a week (a house call!). He reassured her that she would grow new skin over the next three weeks or so.

'Good-bye', he said, as he politely shook our hand one by one. And off he went to his next heroic life-saving case. I could see the emerging traces of a permanent frown on his young handsome face, probably carved there by the many terrible things he had already witnessed in his young doctor's career.

Well, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Holland is one of the best places to injure yourself and end up in the emergency room. The emergency care in this small Dutch community is far above average and the doctors on-call look like they were cut out of a fashion magazine. I wonder how many of their female patients fall on purpose just to be able to come and undergo their treatment?leave comment here Read more...

Talking Houses and Now History

by Marc Hersch

I was prompted to write the following post (originally a comment) by Madeleine Kando’s very evocative, bittersweet essay, “If Houses Could Speak…“ I think her post resonated for me in part, because in 2004, I too visited Amsterdam, Holland during a long layover between the Canary Islands and San Francisco. While there, I took the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank house and stroll the neighborhood. Madeleine’s post put into words a feeling I had back then. Some houses can speak.

I was born in 1947, an “American Jew”, which is to say that my family was very assimilated. My religious training wouldn't fill a thimble. The central tenet of my Jewishness consists of something my mother told me at a very tender age.

She said, "It doesn't matter if you feel like a Jew or think like a Jew or believe like a Jew. All that matters is that there are people in the world who will classify you as a Jew, and when they come for you, there is nothing you can say or do that will keep them from doing to you what they think they should do to Jews."

To be raised an atheist or agnostic, I don't know which, but be born a Jew in the still-simmering melting pot of post-WWII America, was to come of age in a kind of limbo---belonging and not belonging at the same time. As a child, the storied events of WWII were distant history to me. As sure as the sun rose each day, the storied horrors of the past could never be repeated in our enlightened age, and occasional shouts of "Jew boy" not withstanding, reason would rule the world forever and ever.

Distant-history became near-history when, soon after graduating college in 1970, I set out to travel the world. I spent my first year afoot in Europe, just another backpacking American hippie abroad.

I first encountered real Jew hatred during a frightening meeting with the police in Switzerland. They rousted me for sleeping on a bench and when I tried to explain, they shouted, “Shut up you dirty Jew!”;

In Bavaria, where I lived and worked for some time, not far from Munich and only a short time before the massacre of the Israeli athletes, I first saw the Nazi flag displayed on the walls of some small town beer halls filled with boisterously singing Germans. One time a burly German grabbed me by my shirt, spraying me with spittle as he shouted, "You MUST speak German."

I stayed for some time with a very kind family in the university town of Freiburg im Breisgau and worked at a local factory. The patriarch of the house, a one-eyed veteran of the war, was fond of saying after a few beers, "Hitler vas bad but ze var vas goot!"

Did he know I was a born Jew? I never brought the subject up.

My travels throughout Europe consisted mainly of meeting wonderful people and having delightful experiences, but my rare encounters with anti-Semitism and the vastly more ubiquitous post-WWII guilt, transformed distant-history into near-history. Paradoxically, it seemed to me, the passing of time had brought the past nearer to the present.

When I traveled the following year in the Middle East and Asia I realized that in Europe, and pretty much Europe alone, the Christian myth of the Jew as "other" is deeply rooted---more than a thousand years deep---and generally speaking (which is how we sociologists tend to speak) the peoples of Europe have little or no choice in the matter of Jews. The mythical Jew—the “other”--- is cemented into the foundation of their consciousness. They can no more will it away than give up their abiding taste for copious amounts of beer and wine.

Last year I read the recently published "The Third Reich at War" by Richard Evans. In it he gives a meticulous accounting of the disposition of European Jews during WWII. Most disturbing was that, despite some admirable exceptions, all of the nations of Europe, without exception, were complicitous when it came to ridding themselves of “their Jews” and confiscating Jewish property.

A month ago I visited friends in Israel and France and what had become near-history during my travels years ago, became now-history. As is common knowledge, liberal Europe on the whole, and France in particular, have become deeply critical of Israel. The Jews cast out from Europe were never, as the popular European story now goes, rabid ideological Zionists seeking hegemony over Palestine. They were the remnants of European Jewry who had nowhere else to go. Although Israel was granted legitimacy by the Europeans in 1948, the reality is that those who sought refuge in that faraway land found solace only in shared purpose--to survive. But their battle to survive has raged on unabated.

It seems that now-history remains in practice, the same as near-history and distant-history. The deeply rooted Christian myth of the Jew as "other" abides. The Jew continues to be seen as a secret aggressor, possessed of magical powers out of all proportion to his numbers, and he continues to work wherever he is, to undermine God's good and true natural order.

The Arab-Islamic world, in which anti-Semitism is virtually non-existent, has a very different axe to grind but has learned to use the European myth of the "other" to great advantage as they press forward with their grievances.

Like many people who have lived more than half a century, Marc Hersch’s life experiences are many and varied. Years ago he worked in the fields picking beans, in steel mills as a ladleman and in oil fields as a sandblaster. He studied the Sociology of Education at university, taught in public schools, and worked for years as a consultant to various organizations. As a youth he traveled around much of the planet with a pack on his back, mostly chasing girls. Later in life he raised a family, did what families do, and spent six years sailing with them half-way round the world and back again. He currently calls Santa Cruz, California, home as he has for 30 years. As he looks back on it all he’s not sure what to call himself at this point in the game, other than human being. Suggestions, so long as they are civil, are always welcome. Marc’s blog can be found at: http://www.3sigma.com/
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Obama Beats Osama

By Tom Kando

Is this a good title or what? My wife came up with it.

Lately, the news has been coming fast and furious. The most prominent recent issues have been demographic: Kate and William (marriage), President Obama (birth) and Osama Bin Laden (death).

Here is my take on the British Royal wedding: it was real nice. How is that, for excellent political analysis?

As to the other two issues mentioned, it is also difficult to make any meaningful comments about them at this point, since just about everything has already been said over the past week or so. Just this, maybe: Read more...

If Houses Could Speak..

by Madeleine Kando

I went down memory lane again during my most recent visit to Amsterdam. I like to stroll down the old familiar streets, inhaling the smell of a cosmopolitan city and generally enjoying my brief visit to the town I grew up in.

My favorite pass-time is to walk through the old neighborhood, peek through the windows of the house I used to live in. I like that ritual. This time, however, my visit took on an added dimension. This time I got caught up in the city-wide effort to honor the Jews who were taken from their homes by the Nazis.

So here I was, together with my Dutch friend Edith who lost her entire family in the holocaust. She took me by the hand on this incredible journey, like a good teacher does with a student and we followed the trail of the thousands of Jews who were taken from their homes and herded to the Station to be shoved onto the cattle trains that were going to the concentration camps.

We first went to the house where her parents met and fell in love. It was one of those amazingly quiet side-streets that makes you wonder where the city has disappeared to, together with all the traffic noise. We looked up at the windows where her mother and four aunts had lived. Her aunts were taken from that house and sent to Auschwitz. We rang the bell but there was no-one at home. What did the aunts feel when a Nazi soldier rang this same bell on an equally quiet day in 1942? Did they know what was in store for them? We continued on to our next stop, the Achtergracht.

It’s a cute ginger bread-like house with only one room on each floor. As I stand there I realize that the house speaks silently to me of all the tragedies that it has witnessed, the many lives that it has harbored, one of which was mine as a young girl. The paper in my hand says that a ‘Mozes Frank’ lived here. He was married to Eva Frank. He was taken from this house by the Nazi's in 1942.

Did he sleep in my old room? Did he wake up and look out, like I did onto the barges where men covered with soot were carrying off sacks filled with coal? Did he walk on the cold wooden floor to the little bathroom and had to sit sideways because the space was so small? Did he go down the three flights of steep stairs to make coffee in the tiny little kitchen? Why was he taken from this amazing house instead of me? What if I had lived there in 1942 instead of him? Why wasn't I born yet and he was?

Tomorrow, on May 4th, thousands of Amsterdam residents will put a poster in their window to mark their house if a former Jewish resident was arrested or deported to Nazi death camps during World War II.

This poster idea is the initiative of Frits Rijksbaron, a marketing executive who hopes to remind Amsterdam's citizens how different Amsterdam would have been had 61,700 Jews not been removed from their city.

More than seventy percent of Dutch Jews were killed by the Nazis. Children, babies, grandmothers, fathers and mothers. I am on the Dutch ‘Jewish Homes’ website staring at the list of thousands of addresses. Every address has one, two, five names.. All gone, wiped out, removed. The sheer number boggles the mind. It’s true that Holland deported the highest proportion of Jews of all of Nazi-occupied Western European countries. The Dutch are still trying to figure out how that happened.

Now I am back in Boston, writing and watching the morning break outside my window. My little ranch house here in Boston doesn’t have that much of a history. It is ignorant of so much suffering. Too young and unbranded. It might not make it to a ripe old age anyway because, unlike my house on the Achtergracht, it wasn’t built to last. But if houses could speak I am sure everyone of them would want to tell a story. leave comment here Read more...

Tom Tom

By Tom Kando

I just spent a month in Europe, mostly visiting my 98-year old mother who lives an hour North of Amsterdam, and helping her with this and that. I took my Garmin with me, with the Eurochip. Over there, they call GPS “Tom Tom.” Different brand, I guess.

This technology is miraculous and hilarious. For example, I took my mother down to Belgium for a couple of days. For the first time in my life, I drove around Europe without even a map in my car as a backup.

That the Garmin could accurately guide me down the major freeways and turnpikes to the large cities was expected. But what blew my mind is that it also knew every single back alley of every hamlet in every country! For instance, I once took the wrong exit off a major turnpike somewhere in Belgium. In order to get back on track, I had to meander through a maze of tiny rural streets. The Garmin knew every single one of them, guiding me accurately towards my destination.

Amazingly, the Garmin even knows specific addresses. For example, we approach my friend Wilfried’s house on 227 Lomburg Lane, in the tiny Belgian town of Herselt. And somehow the machine knows that this house is 550 feet from where we are driving!

I suspect that it would be the same in Calcutta or in Sao Paolo. I am usually not a fan of fancy technology, but this is truly impressive.

I also smile when I realize that the whole worldwide GPS system is in the hands of the US Army in Colorado. It runs on 36 satellites. So America is not entirely washed up, yet.

We call the lady who talks to us through the Garmin “Mary.” Mary is funny sometimes.

Of course, all the GPS jokes have already been made a thousand times, about arguing with your Garmin, telling her/him to go to hell when you deviate from her commands, when she “recalculates,” etc. I am usually a Johnny-come-lately to new technology. But here are a few funny things:

When we hit the road to Belgium and “Mary” began to talk to me, I replied something like:

“No Mary. That’s not the right way! You don’t know what you are talking about!”

My mother cautioned me to be polite and not to get into a fight, thinking that I was talking to a live woman.

Also, we have the machine set on English. In non-English places, Mary has trouble with pronunciation. For example, somewhere in Belgium, we had to drive down King Boudewijn Avenue. To Mary, this became King Boodahweejn Avenue. I had no idea what she was talking about, but fortunately, the screen also spells out street names.

And for some reason, even though Mary is English, she also mis-pronounces English names in foreign countries. I suppose she has to mispronounce consistently. For instance, we had to take Martin Luther King Boulevard somewhere in Holland, but to her this was Marteen Looder King.

Oh well, Mary is a lot of fun, and GPS is a miracle. leave comment here Read more...

Lost in the Ardennes

by Madeleine Kando

I took a trip to Belgium this week with my very old mom. We spent hours inching our way through miles and miles of traffic jammed small, shiny Mercedez-Benzes, BMW's and Alfa Romeos. Everyone seems to drive expensive cars here. An occasional sign that says 'bad road surface' on stretches of impeccably smooth asphalt makes me wonder what kind of standard the Dutch attach to a 'bad road surface'. How would they call the potholed, frost-cracked highways back in good old Boston?

We finally left clean, organized Holland and made it to Belgium. At least I think we entered Belgium because there are no signs that tell you whether you have crossed the border. I knew we were no longer in Holland because of the road conditions. They started to look more like the familiar wrecks in the US.

You see, compared to America, those small Northern European countries are all very 'high-context' cultures. Their inhabitants expect foreigners to know things without it being spelled out. You are supposed to 'smell' in which country you are driving through. They don't believe in old fashioned signs that say 'Bienvenue a la Belgique'. Back in the good old dark ages you had to cross not one, but two borders: one to leave Holland, after which you were in no-man's land for a bit, until you reached the actual Belgian border where they thoroughly inspected your car for contraband.

That IS a problem around here because some of these Northern European countries are the size of peanuts and if you get distracted for a second by the gorgeous scenery, you end up in Germany, or Luxemburg.

Americans live in a low-context cutlure. They expect everyone else to be foreign, so they have the decency to spell out things for you. It doesn't matter that you have crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean to get there, as soon as you arrive, a sign says: 'Y-O-U  A-R-E  N-O-W   I-N  T-H-E  U-S'. Now that's polite.

So here I am, trying to stay in Belgium. But no luck. Something tells me I am in the wrong country. I see a lady that looks like a native and stop to ask for directions. In French, because that's what I spoke ten minutes ago in a café: 'Madame, dans quelle direction est Monschau?'

'Nein, nur Deutsch'. (no, only German). She goes to her car and brings back a map, the same map that I am holding in my hand. She shows me on the map where Monschau is. 'Well, duh, I know where Monschau is on the map too, Fraulein, I am nicht blind.'

'Danke schon' I say and drive off. Getting directions didn't work out but at least I know I am in Germany. After many involuntary detours we finally make it to this amazing place called Monschau. A village so old that I expect knights to come charging out of the old castle on the hill. The tiny cobblestoned streets are swarming with people of every imaginable nationality. On the village square, surrounded by old timber-framed German houses, we settle for a well-deserved drink. It's crowded. Tourists have gathered here to enjoy this gorgeous spring day. I hear Dutch, French, German, Italian and some languages that I don't understand (Russian? Romanian?). The waitress is dressed in a Mädel costume with her bussom pushed high with a black laced up ribbon. What is amazing is that she only speaks German. With all these nationalities drinking her coffee she has maintained her high-context culture to a tee. If you don't speak German you have to rely on sign language. So I gesticulate and try to make her understand that I want 'black' tea with lemon.

This place feels like the Tower of Babel. The waitress cannot communicate with her customers. The Belgians don't speak German, the Germans don't speak French and the notoriously high-context French don't WANT to speak anything but French, even if they can.

I am a bit nervous about the trip back home. We are only a few hundred kilometers away from Bergen, but I will have to find my way through three or maybe four countries, depending if I take a wrong turn into Luxemburg. Oh, look! A group of bikers with Dutch letterings on their shirts. I walk over and ask them if they have encountered a country called Belgium on their trip and if so, in which direction that would be, please. They point to a sign that says 'Malmedy'. So, off we go, hoping that in a few hours we will be driving on some unblemished road surface. That will be a clear sign that we are in Holland again.

It will be a relief to be back in Boston. At least I won't have the problem of finding myself in the wrong country, even if I drive for days in a straight line. I bet these nice 'low-context' Californians have signs posted that read: 'You are now about to drive into the Pacific Ocean'. leave comment here Read more...

What Makes you Happy?

By Tom Kando

An excellent Dutch monthly magazine I was just reading is Maarten! - named after its editor-in-chief. It is entertaining and provocative.

The issue I picked up recently (April 17) had Happiness (Geluk) as its main cover story, including interviews with some prominent Dutch people.

For example, there is an article by Alies Pegtel based on an interview with former Minister and Parliament member Rita Verdonk. I am not sure, but I believe that this lady has been controversial as the leader of a political party named Proud of the Netherlands, a somewhat nativist party.

Be that as it may, the now retired Minister ponders what makes her happy. Her list is predictable, and sensible: For one thing, she has always felt happiest pouring much energy into her work. Good. But small things are also important, she says. For example, a beautifully sunlit flower vase, or her blossoming garden. Quite.

She is also a lot happier now that she has retired from Parliament. There, she couldn’t stand the lack of collegiality, the gossip, the backstabbing and the opportunism.

Amen! I, too, spent 40 years in the bureaucracy - academia in my case - and I still remember the pain more clearly than the pleasure.

Ms. Verdonk adds that the greatest cost she paid, while in politics, was the violence she did to her body and to her health. Again, I strongly empathize - the stress, the headaches, the power contests, the nitpicking. I too, experienced these very onerous things while surviving the bureaucracy for 40 years, and I am sure they aged me.

On the positive side, again, Ms. Verdonk was always happy when she was able to achieve concrete results, solve problems, contribute to the betterment of society.

This article made me think: I find Ms. Verdonk’s list quite reasonable. But as I look around me - in Europe or in America, doesn’t matter - I see lots of people who find happiness in things which leave me entirely indifferent, and in some cases things which I find downright repulsive.

For one thing, the whole world seems to have become enamored with machines. Cars have made men happy for generations, but now, it’s more the electronic machines which make many people orgasmic - computers, I-phones, digital this and digital that. Both cars and electronics leave me utterly indifferent.

Money is, of course, a perennial. From Wall Street to Main street, the love of money reigns supreme. Many people love money more than the things money buys.

Closely related are possessions. Often, it is the ownership of something which makes people ecstatic, not its use - think of the motor homes and boats parked in many driveways, and hardly ever used, because the owners don’t have the time to use them.

The sensual pleasures are important. Good food, good wine, etc. I’ll go along with this. I enjoy sensual pleasures.

Unfortunately, there are also the pathological sources of happiness: it begins with power over others, which is vastly more common than you might think. Then there is the pleasure many derive out of inflicting pain - teasing, pestering, humiliating, demeaning someone in front of others. This, too, is extremely widespread.

Less sinister is a desire to be popular, successful, admired. I say less sinister, because I confess that I suffer from this need. Additional pathological sources of happiness include gun ownership (“I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands”) , substance abuse, gambling.

The only supremely true sources of happiness are love and beauty (as in Mozart). leave comment here Read more...