Silver Bay and Italia

Here's three watercolors I painted for the class I'm taking at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough.  The first is a scene in Perugia, Italy, the second is a path by the auditorium at Silver Bay, New York and the third is of lakeside view (imagined) of Lake George, NY.

Political Crisis in Thailand (updated 5/19/2010)

Since my son, Roy, and daughter-in-law, Jenn, have been living in Bangkok, Thailand for over a year now, we’ve been keeping a close watch on the deteriorating political situation there.  Normal life has been greatly affected.  Since tensions have reached a boiling point, Jenn’s offices have been closed for weeks and Roy has been able to go to work only sporadically.  Last weekend, after being unable or unwilling to accept the government’s offer of new elections in November, the Red shirts expanded the conflict zone.  Barricades sprang up and fires have been set outside of the central square-mile area they have occupied for the last six weeks.  The conflict zone has crept closer and closer to their neighborhood.  Late last week, a barricade appeared at the end of their street. Fearful of getting trapped, unable to get out to shop groceries or for emergencies services, Jenn and Roy decided to relocate temporarily to an unaffected part of the Bangkok.   Here’s Roy’s email telling us of their move.

We are safe, away from the action now.  We moved away from our apartment today and are in another side of Bangkok.

Didn't want to alarm you before, but here (just before the minute mark) is footage from my street, Soi Ngam Duphli, this weekend.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8684288.stm

We wanted to stick it out, but last night was the last straw.  Groups of thugs were not too far away erecting their stupid tire blockades, there were lots of blasts not to far away, and I was getting pretty agitated.  I went to bed with my clothes on and contacts in just in case I had to jump into action.  I was pretty jumpy and I hope Jenn forgives me for that!

This morning was quiet again, but we've had enough and the end is not visible yet.  Our apartment is safe, security-wise, but we don’t want to be in a situation where one of those tire blockades traps us indefinitely.  So we found a hotel that allows dogs, set the cat up for a few days to protect the apartment (we’ll rescue him if it goes longer then a few more days) and moved to the Thonglor area of Bangkok (Sukhumvit 55).  It’s well away from trouble.

The government might be moving into the main Red shirt camp today to clear the area.  Then again maybe they are just bluffing again.  The city is tired of the Red shirts, for the most part, and also tired of the government's constant missteps.  The army's actions haven't exactly contained the crisis, just set tensions ablaze and then have sat back as the reds went mad across the city.  Why haven't they called a curfew yet?  They planned one for yesterday but then said it might disrupt peoples’ lives.  That has got to be the line of year.

Indeed!  Of course, the news we get about the situation there comes mostly from the NY Times, NPR, the PBS News Hour, and emails other friends send us.  Our friends, Tom and Bev, spend five months of the year in Chang Mai in the north and have lots of Thai friends, so we get emails that their friends send us.  So, compared with most Americans (99.5%?), we’re fairly well-informed about the situation there.   Nevertheless, the two emails below between Roy and me provide an interesting, and perhaps instructive, illustration of how perspectives can differ.  While the impressions I’ve gained aren’t completely wrong, the “back-story” Roy presents cuts a lot closer to what is really going on than anything I’ve read or heard here. 

On Sunday, May 17^th, I wrote this:

Whatever the merits of the red shirts grievances, they're fast losing public and international support.  Public opinion seems to have shifted dramatically in favor of the government and government action.  For all of us who wish for the peaceful resolution of conflicts like these, the reality is that options quickly diminish and you're left with only one response.  Violence.   A week ago, world opinion, and perhaps even Thai opinion, was evenly divided.  Most of us greeted the government offer to dissolve parliament and hold elections in November with a sigh of relief.  Of course, we thought, the Red shirts would accept that deal; it's what they have been demanding!   Or so they said.  But, being divided, they were unable to agree.  Distrustful and wary, they could not formulate a cohesive response.  Perhaps they thought they could leverage more concessions.  Then a Red shirt general is shot in the head while being interviewed by a Times reporter.  [He died Tuesday.]  Quickly, the justification for fighting becomes perverse and devolves into shorter and shorter grievance cycles until it’s "I'm fighting because the government just shot one of our leaders," and eventually "I'm fighting because someone just shot at me!"  Since the red shirts are a mix of people with disparate agendas without strong leadership that can exercise discipline and speak for everyone, collective emotions rather than clear thinking seem to be driving the outcome.

So, again, for all of us who wish for a peaceful outcome, the reality is you're left with only one response.  Violence.  Where are the think tanks devoted to resolution conflict?  Where is Jimmy Carter?  What would a Quaker do? 

Roy’s well-reasoned response was this:

Well, to be honest, the story-line of the outside media about the Red-shirts has been very different then the one told here in Bangkok.  It was sort of odd to see international outlets fall for the Red-shirt propaganda about democracy.  It put them into a time-tested story line that didn't take much effort for whichever journalist they parachuted in to take up.  Meanwhile, people living here know the back-story.  They hear stories about how the Red-shirts have been training an 'army' and have raided army bases for weapons.  Thais know that [the Red-shirt] leaders are as corrupt as any element in Thailand.  They know the damage the Red-shirts have already done to the future of the country.  Do the Red-shirts have legitimate grievances, sure, but they have been strongly manipulated to the point of madness.  

Thaksin Shinawatra was a rich, corrupt, man, just like the leaders the Red-shirts are raging about now.  But, he was also introduced something unheard of in Thai politics: populism.  This wasn't bad in itself, but when his corruption got him into hot water, he has used this populism extremely cynically.  I don't think he realized everything that would happen, but he ignited a flame that is going to be hard to put out.  The Red-shirt leaders make a lot of promises and hand out a lot of money to their supporters.  They also poisoned the well of the current political system, creating saints and [demons].  In the end, I don't think the Red-shirts really want democracy, they want to overthrow the government -- they want the power they were promised [by Thaksin].

The elite, meanwhile, mostly in Bangkok, talk eloquently about the house that has been built here, built by the father (the king).  It’s a strong house, built for all Thais, they say.  The reds want to destroy this beautiful house.  But, in the end, it’s always been a house built for the elites to live on top, no matter how generous they thought they were being.  They are not blameless in this matter.  Thailand has to change; it has to make room for the rural areas to be able to speak out for their needs without violence.

I think the chance of a final confrontation at this point is about 50/50.  This is not China, that’s for sure.  The army is not in any rush to bring in the tanks against their own people.  They want to wait and hope the reds give up.  They are letting the Red-shirts rage on.  To me, that’s riskier –fires are being set, engulfing buildings, lawlessness is spreading, and people are caught in the crossfire.  It just delays the inevitable.  I hate to say it, but I find myself wishing the crackdown will finally come, and soon.  It’s not my country though, it’s not yours.  It isn’t our country that will have to heal after the bloodshed.  So they wait, I guess, until they absolutely have to.

So there you have it.  Events unfold hourly.  By the time this is posted, a settlement may have been reached, or the Army finally will have attacked, or, most likely, nothing will have changed, except the chaos will have spread and Roy and Jenn will have to move again.  And Americans will still have missed the story behind the story.  As news budgets continue to shrink, a dearth of reliable news will only increase.  We have no direct role in events unfolding in Thailand, so news there is only reported sporadically, if at all.  However, in those places we do play a role, the lesson is this:  Inevitably, we’ll get it wrong.  Inevitably, our involvement will just make it worse.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Since this was posted, the Thai military has moved in and many of the Red-shirts have disbursed, but fighting has continued. Whether the conflicts spreads and becomes into a gorilla war, or takes another form remains to be seen. 



Update 2, May 19, 2010
For those who would like to delve further into the "back-story", here is a link to an excellent article about the political situation in Thailand.  It brilliant piece of political analysis and terrific writing too.  Thai article>>

A Farm Went by My Window

A farm went by my window
last night.
A fleeting window of my childhood
Framed by organic memories,
Of scents of hay, dairy cows, specked chickens,
And sun cats licking,
Where poetry springs naturally
Inspired by living things,
Just for the pleasure of it.

A farm went by my window
last night,
Slowing, frame by frame
I watch as for the first time.
It crept from the recess of my memory,
Forever imprinted there
To surface in my dreams,
Framed in a context of certainly,
Like a dormant seed that seeks the moist, warm earth,
Running through my mind
rich in living, doing, dying things.

A farm went by my window
slowly last night,
With time to reflect upon
my place,
It was a call to participate on equal terms
with other living things,
To coexist with life’s seasons,
And to be grateful for events I don’t control.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I had resisted reading Malcolm Gladwell until I realized that I had already read many of his articles in The New Yorker.  My prejudice was that I’m suspicious of popular nonfiction, and, unfairly or not, the reviews I read of his first bestseller, Blink, were mixed.  But when my friend John said that Outliers was an “epiphany,” or something to that effect, I picked up a copy to see what he found so compelling.  I’m glad I did.

First and foremost, Gladwell is a gifted and thoughtful reporter.  He’s really good at drilling down through what we call “common sense” to expose more revealing and occasionally startling truths.  In Outliers, Gladwell challenges the conventional notion about how successful people become successful -- uncovering some of the conditions that led to their extraordinary success and, in a few cases, spectacular failures.

He starts out simply, by examining the birthdates of the finalists in the Canadian junior hockey league playoffs.  Why is it that most of the players were born in January, February and March?  This pattern holds true not only for junior hockey but also for Canadian players in the NHL. Why?  Well, it turns out that until just a few years ago, no one noticed this pattern, much less questioned it, until a Canadian psychologist named Roger Barnsley studied this phenomenon.

The answer, by the way, is that the deadline for signing kids to play is January 1^st.  A boy whose birthday is January 2^nd could be playing along side a boy whose birthday is twelve months later, on December 29th.  Think about the difference in physical maturity of a preadolescent ten-year-old born in January and one born months later.  At ten, there is a significant developmental difference between the two, with an overwhelming advantage going to the older kid.  What sets them apart is not only their age difference when they start out, but also the accumulated advantages heaped on the older player.  Year after year, the older player has more opportunities to play and, therefore, gains experience denied the younger player.  He is more likely to be picked for the traveling teams and of being selected for the more advanced hockey leagues.  Year after year, the older kid gains more and more experience, putting distance between him and his younger peers.  This experience pays off.

This is just one of many phenomena Malcolm Gladwell examines in this entertaining and insightful book.  The genesis of this book lies in his own family history, which he describes in the epilogue.  It comes down to two critical points; the amount of time you spend developing a skills – whether it’s programming a computer, playing an instrument or practicing law – and the circumstances into which you were lucky enough to have been born – and here I don’t mean wealth.  Whether you are Bill Gates, Bill Joy or Steve Jobs, who each caught the wave of computer technology, or members of the legal profession who caught the wave of mergers and acquisition law in the early sixties, personal circumstances and timing can be more important than genius.  Would Bill Gates have founded Microsoft and become a household name were it not for the fact that he had, literally, unprecedented, unlimited access to a mainframe computer in high school at a time when students were just being introduced to hand calculators?  Bill Gates himself attributes much of his success to this unusual circumstance, luck and timing.

Outliers goes well beyond a contemplation of how successful people got their start.  He also examines cultural issues.  For example, what explains the high incidence of airplane crashes of Korean Air in the 1980s and 90s, and what happened to turn that around?  And, why is it that Chinese students do better in math tests than almost any other cultural group?  And what was the cause of feuds in the Appalachians that resulted in more deaths per capita than anywhere else in America? And what did this pattern of violence have in common with the cultures of Sicily or the Basque region of Spain?  And why is an educational program started in the Bronx, where poor students outperform students in much more privileged communities, so successful?  Gladwell examines the KIPP middle schools and uncovers the conditions that have made such a difference in the lives of students there.

Sometimes you have to work at finding the thread that weaves these stories together, but that’s what makes this such a fascinating, insightful look at things most of us have not spent much time thinking about, but should.  Employing his exceptional reportorial skills, Malcolm Gladwell delights in delivering new surprise in every chapter, and that spirit of inquiry is contagious.  I’ll look forward to reading every book he writes from now on.

The Judge

(Note: This poem was inspired by one word that came up when President Obama spoke about his criteria for selecting a Supreme Court Justice; Empathy.  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  Including me.)

The mirror reflects      nothing

other than a purplish, bulbous nose,

decalcified and scarred still

by decades old acne

preserved in alcohol,

hanging high above

desiccated lips,

and deeply carved creases

racing downward,

merging with flaccid dewlaps

framing a crinkly stubble cleft of chin

that quivers now, even in wakefulness.

Under heavy protruding brows 

grown wild,

merging with each other,

sprout wiry hairs 

like a neglected garden,

from inside ears, nostrils,

and deep creases, long invisible

to cloudy, rheumy eyes.

Altogether, an almost Neander-like visage,

topped by a marbleized,

domelike pate and

staring, bulging eyes,

hidden beneath hoods -- ancient, bristly folds of skin --

reflecting nothing;

a countenance framed

by pendulous ears that seem to grow,

even as bones shrink,

joints calcify.

He doesn’t recognize this face,

even as he stretches and twist his mouth,

bulges his eyes, straining

until his thin black veins pulsate,

and flares his nostrils,

and sticks out his hoary tongue.

Still, no spark of recognition,

no gentle reassurance,

no compassion or sympathy offered.

Void of history and dreams,

reflecting a life so insular, of

so little time spent imagining the lives of others,

empathy eludes him,

even when he is in most need of it himself.

TIME TO CLIP … The Hairs that Wag the Tail that Wags the Dog

President Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali, stuffs ballot boxes so his brother can retain power; profits from opium sales; plays US forces off against the Taliban; buys up land that the US will need to stage operations, then rents it to us; profiting at every turn. Increasingly, President Karzai has convinced himself that the US wants to occupy Afghanistan permanently, but resists any talk of our leaving. Unhappy that the Electoral Complaints Commission found wide irregularities in the August election, throwing out a third of the ballots, Karzai decided to appoint all five members of the commission himself.

Angered by signs of corruption impossible to ignore, Obama uninvited Karzai to Washington. (If you’re going to be corrupt, don’t be so obvious!) To show his pique, Karzai invites Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to Afghanistan, who then proceeds to deliver a virulently anti-American speech, with a smiling Karzai looking on.

Now, President Karzai bitterly blame the UN monitors for electoral irregularities!  Is this an elaborate dance or has is he just losing it?

Meanwhile, Americans are dying in Helmand province while Afghan troops bring up the rear. And that’s just a warm up for things to come, as US and Afghan forces prepare to take Kandihar.

Lyricist Tyron Wells said it best - “… What are we fighting for?”

Then there’s Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu thumbs his nose at America, his strongest ally, by announcing new settlements in East Jerusalem just as VP Biden is there to reaffirm America’s eternal commitment to Israel. Then, arriving in Washington days later, Netanyahu makes a combative speech at AIPAC, the powerful American Israeli Lobby, reaffirming Israel intention to build and expand settlements, even though, as any one outside of Israel can see, peace talks, even “proximity” talks, will never happen as long as settlement activity continues.

These developments clearly annoyed Preident Obama. So, the President dines along, leaving Netanyahu to cool his heals. Upon arriving home, an indignant Israeli press and the prime minister himself complains about the chilly reception Netanyahu got at the White House.

Then Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, unhappy with election results, bitterly contests the election by conspiring to disqualify backers of his opponent, former Prime Minister Ayad Alawi. It turns out that, behind the scenes, our “old buddy”, Ahmed Chalabi, the very Chalabi who misled us into the Iraq war in 2003, controls the election commission and, it turns out, is closely aligned with the Iranians. Now the Iranians are playing the role of powerbroker in Iraq.

“… What are we fighting for?”

Are we propping up Iraq and Afghanistan long enough for them to walk on their own, only to have them run to Iran for succor? Should we just start packing our bags, pass out “mission accomplished!” stickers, and, like the affluent parents of ungrateful prodigy, pretend to feel good that they are advocating for themselves.

As long as we’re building roads, schools, hospitals, providing security and propping up their economies, we’re tolerated – but don’t mistake it for love.

I think we’ll just have to accept that they’re adults now. Let them pick their own friends. Time to start withholding child support. (We’re stretched too thin; we need to think about retirement – of our national debt.) It’s for their own good. But don’t expect them write home any time soon.

Maybe the best exit strategy is to get thrown out by the nascent regimes of both countries, and stop worrying about who they call friend afterwards. After all, it’s not as if we don’t need to attend to a few domestic priorities. As the passage of the healthcare bill demonstrates, getting a few bills passed at home goes a long way towards improving our image abroad.

American will have a hard time coming to terms with our diminished influence in the world. But joining the international bread line as a third rate power might prove the greatest humiliation of all.

The Verge of the Hill

A lone boy kicks the ball, first to one side of the house and then to the other.  Once he kicks it too far, and it flies over the edge of the hill, down among the workmen, many feet below, too busy to return it, indifferent, mildly resentful even, daring to be asked, although the boy is silent.

The boy stood above the ridge formed by the sand pit below, as earth machines undercut the hill, carrying away truckload after truckload of sand and gravel, to places the boy knew not where.

It is dinnertime.  His mother calls him in, but times being hard, except for a boy who has known no other, they eat lentil soup cooked with spinach from the garden and bits of ham, and home bread born from the oven to soak up vestiges of soup, a trick his mother learned years ago, to make the most of the nutrition there, of every bite.

The boy’s father eats silently, quickly, and hurries on.  Under lights rigged, turning night into day, he works two shifts now.  But the boy is not of an age to know that that is his fate.

This was his father’s land.  This house, built by his grandfather, planted high on the hill in prosperous, hopeful times, still standing, barely, shielding itself from the scene to the north with a narrow veil of trees, blind to what is coming.

After dinner, the boy returns to the crest of the undercut hill, trees precarious, a brow of grass ready to disengage, a precipice now, as hungry machines attack and retreat, again and again; the ball nowhere to be seen down below, lost.

Facing south, her favorite time of day, the boy’s mother, standing on the porch, the sun’s oblique rays warming her skin, witnesses alone a daily trick of nature; the sun nestling down among the soft fir trees for a good nights rest.

But facing north, at the verge of the hill, the boy buttons his jacket against the autumnal chill.  For the first time, the boy sees.