Now that summer has arrived and the weather has started to get nice around here, there have been a lot of BBQs recently. They are usually international events, where foreigners and Japanese people mingle.
I usually get into a lot of interesting conversations there, so I thought I’d jot a few of them down.
There is a group of what may be described as “Japanese hippies” there. Actually “hippy” might be the wrong word. These guys have nice clothes, good hygiene, and only slightly long hair. Maybe a better description might be what Phish called, “prep-school hippies”, although even that is slightly inadequate because they’re no longer in school, but about my age. They do remind me of some of the people I went to high school with though.
They are always listening to music or playing drums, and seem to have an aura of coolness around them that attracts a lot of girls. They are very friendly to me, but to be honest I am more interested in the girls hanging around them than I am in talking to them. I am friendly and talk to them only so that I can be around the girls. I engage them in conversation only to the bare minimum that I can still be on friendly terms with them, and then talk to the girls around them.
I feel slightly guilty about this, and it strikes me that these are the exactly the kind of guys I tried so hard to attach myself to in high School. I wonder why now I am only concerned about using them for their access to women. Perhaps since I have come to Japan I have become spoiled by attention. I have met countless Japanese people who have been looking to make foreign friends or practice their English. Perhaps I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve stopped appreciating gestures of friendliness, and now blow off people I would have jumped at the chance to hang out with ten years ago.
Or perhaps I’ve just changed since I was in high school. In high school I thought if I could just hang out with these people enough their coolness would rub off on me, but now I’ve more or less given up the pursuit of cool, and like to hang out with people whose conversation I genuinely enjoy, and who have similar interests to me. This tends to be largely other geeks like myself.
****
I am introduced to another English teacher like myself. She has just been in Japan for 6 months. I mentioned I have been here for almost 4 years now, and she couldn't believe it.
At 4 years, I’m starting to become one of the old men here. Very few people stay that long, and if they do, they are usually the “lifers”. People employed in an English conversation school get burned out quick and seldom make it more than a year. Even JET has a 3-year cap. 4 years seems like an incredibly long amount of time to everyone else.
“Your Japanese must be perfect,” she exclaimed.
“You would think after 4 years it should be, wouldn’t you?” I said. It’s not as good as it should be, and sometimes people who have only been here for 2 years have better Japanese than me. It’s a depressing topic, and I don’t like to talk about how bad my Japanese is, so I left it at that.
“After 4 years, you must have had all sorts of great experiences,” she said. “What’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done? The thing that you can go home and tell everyone about.”
When the question is put to me like that, it seems like I’ve done very little during my 4 years here, and I don’t have any interesting stories. I thought for a moment, then mentioned the across Japan hitchhiking trip Greg and I did a couple years ago, and that seems to impress her a bit.
Although to be honest even that sounds more impressive than it was. The trip went so smoothly, and the rides came so readily, that it can’t really be called much of an adventure. In fact in our journey across Japan we never even got off the highway until the very end. And besides which, I can’t really take credit for that trip because I would never have done that trip if Greg hadn’t pressured me into it.
***
I was near the grill and a Canadian friend of mine was entertaining several Japanese girls. He decided to direct some of the attention towards me by saying, “Joel actually is from Iran.”
There were coos of amazement, but I quickly denied this. My friend changed into English long enough to say, “Ah come on man, you’ve got to play with it a little.” I apologized for blowing the joke.
A Japanese girl with a big tattoo on her back came over. She was wearing a short top, so large parts of the dragon tattoo were visible.
Historically tattoos in Japan are usually only worn by the yakuza, or Japanese mafia. I think this is changing somewhat because the girl in question did not appear to be involved in organized crime, but her tattoo was an object of interest to everyone present.
My Canadian friend started to set me up again. “Actually Joel has a tattoo on his ass.”
I tried not to blow the joke. “It’s true,” I said.
“Let us see it,” someone said.
“No, you can’t see it,” I answered defensively. And then I tried to recover, “I mean, I would show it to you but…”
Someone else asked what the tattoo was. I tried to think of the most random thing I could think off, and thought of Mike Tyson’s tattoo of Chairman Mao on his bicep. “It’s Chairman Mao,” I said. Actually for people who know me, maybe that is a bit predictable, but these people didn’t know me so I thought it would still have a random funniness to it. No one laughed, and I thought that maybe because of the recent tension between Japan and China it was a bad joke.
***
I am introduced to another girl, this one Japanese. She wants to learn German, and asks me if I can teach her. “I don’t know German,” I said. “You would have to find a German person to teach you that. I only speak English.”
“But there are no German people in Gifu,” she complains.
“There’s at least one,” I said. “I’m sure of that.”
“Can you introduce me to him?”
“He’s not really a friend of mine,” I said. “Actually he’s more of an enemy.” I almost liked the way that sounded as it rolled off my tongue. I never really had an enemy before. The girl just nodded in a confused way, and changed the subject.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
Thoughts on Emma Goldman
The library in Gifu prefecture actually has a copy of Emma Goldman’s autobiography, which I’ve managed to get my grubby hands on. I’ve not finished it yet, but I can’t recommend it highly enough if any of you are near a library that holds a copy. (There's a free copy online here actually, if you like reading books on computer.)
When I finally finish the whole thing, I’ll probably write up another review for Media Mouse. In the meantime I’ll abuse the patience of my readers by just posting thoughts as they come to me.
In her book Goldman describes the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick in 1892 by her lover Alexander Berkman (for which Emma provided the money for the gun). Emma defends this with the following quotation, “…did not the end justify the means? Our end was the sacred cause of the oppressed and exploited people. It was for them that we were going to give our lives. What if a few should have to perish?—the many would be made free and could live in beauty and in comfort. Yes, the end in this case justified the means.” In fact the words “the end justifies the means” appear several times in Goldman’s book.
I, like most people, flinch whenever I see the phrase, “the end justifies the means.” But my first thought was that 1892 is different than 2005. Certainly the bloody history of the past 100 years, the holocaust, the gulags, the atomic bombs, and the terrorists attacks, have taught us that however noble you believe your cause to be, you have to be careful about the means you use to pursue it. In 1892, perhaps this was less clear.
My second thought is that most people actually do believe “the ends justify the means.” Of course we all recoil when we see it unapologetically in print, as it seems to recall Machiavelli, the Soviet 5 year plan, and all the worst aspects of Western philosophy. But if you closely examine the political philosophy of the average American, they believe very strongly that the ends justify the means. They just lack the intellectual honesty of Emma Goldman to state so directly.
For instance almost no one believes that war is inherently a good thing. Even Hitler declared that he wished nothing but peace. But many people are willing to support war to achieve what they believe is a greater good. Therefore the 75% of Americans who initially supported the Iraq War believe on some level that the ends do justify the means. Anyone who supported the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam, or the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, believes the ends justify the means. Of course we all flinch when we see the phrase boldly and unapologetically stated, but for most people this belief underlies their philosophy.
But of course, anarchists make easy targets when they state so directly. When I was a Calvin student, “The Banner” ran an article criticizing Emma Goldman. The article seemed to come out of nowhere (Emma Goldman was not exactly a hot news topic at the time, and the quote was 70 years old) but anarchists made easy targets.
The article cited a anti-government quotation from Emma Goldman during the 1930s, and then said that Emma Goldman seemed like a spoiled child who only wanted the freedom to do what she wanted, and that she didn’t understand her responsibility to society went hand in hand with individual freedom.
I wrote a long letter to the editor saying that Emma Goldman was a social anarchist, and so to criticize her for excessive individualism showed an appalling lack of understanding about the difference between social anarchism and individual anarchism. Also the 1930s saw the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, so Emma Goldman’s fears about excessive government powers should be put in context.
The Banner actually printed a portion of my letter. It also printed a couple other letters arguing similar points. Buma, who worked as an intern for “The Banner” that summer, told me they were actually flooded with letters saying the author of the article didn’t know what she was talking about. Who knew so many anarchists read “The Banner”?
Anyway, the point is people like Emma Goldman seem to make easy targets whenever a magazine like “The Banner” is looking for a soft punching bag. Since “The Banner” seems to be in the habit of resurrecting obscure quotes from Emma Goldman and writing polemics against them, one can easily imagine, “the ends justify the means” being held up as an example of the violence of anarchism, without any corresponding reference made to state violence.
This is the way we are trained to think. In the recent documentary “The Weather Underground”, Mark Rudd says that the Weathermen failed to gain support because it is so strongly ingrained in the American psyche that institutional violence is acceptable, individual violence is not. That is why the massive bombing of civilians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not disturb people as much as the Weather Underground’s symbolic bombing of the Pentagon (which killed no one).
Or in Japan, the anarchist movement was characterized as violent because of attempts to assassinate the emperor, and the actual assassination of a few government officials in the 1920s. But a few years later the US, in its war against Imperial Japan, would kill millions of men women and children, and this is thought to be the acceptable cost of war.
So which is really more violent, anarchism or bourgeois democracy? Anarchists have not dropped nuclear bombs, or carpet-bombed civilian populations. And yet the dominant perception of anarchism is one of violence.
This was true in Emma Goldman’s time as well. There was widespread repression of anarchists after the assassination of President McKinley by nominal anarchist Leon Czolgosz. (Although Czolgosz was only on the fringes of the anarchist movement. He had failed to integrate himself into any actual anarchist groups because they thought he was a police spy).
Emma Goldman was imprisoned and tried in connection with McKinley’s assassination. When reporters interviewed her about the death of McKinley, she replied “is it possible that in the entire United States only the President passed away on this day? Surely many others have also died at the same time, perhaps in poverty and destitution, leaving helpless dependents behind. Why do you expect me to feel more regret over the death of McKinley than of the rest?”
But given the way anarchism has been villianized in the mainstream press, both in Emma Goldman’s time and in ours, the attitude of the mainstream USA seems to be anyone who supports a philosophy that leads to the assassination of one man is inhuman, anyone who supports a philosophy that drops two nuclear bombs on civilian cities is a patriot.
Video Version
When I finally finish the whole thing, I’ll probably write up another review for Media Mouse. In the meantime I’ll abuse the patience of my readers by just posting thoughts as they come to me.
In her book Goldman describes the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick in 1892 by her lover Alexander Berkman (for which Emma provided the money for the gun). Emma defends this with the following quotation, “…did not the end justify the means? Our end was the sacred cause of the oppressed and exploited people. It was for them that we were going to give our lives. What if a few should have to perish?—the many would be made free and could live in beauty and in comfort. Yes, the end in this case justified the means.” In fact the words “the end justifies the means” appear several times in Goldman’s book.
I, like most people, flinch whenever I see the phrase, “the end justifies the means.” But my first thought was that 1892 is different than 2005. Certainly the bloody history of the past 100 years, the holocaust, the gulags, the atomic bombs, and the terrorists attacks, have taught us that however noble you believe your cause to be, you have to be careful about the means you use to pursue it. In 1892, perhaps this was less clear.
My second thought is that most people actually do believe “the ends justify the means.” Of course we all recoil when we see it unapologetically in print, as it seems to recall Machiavelli, the Soviet 5 year plan, and all the worst aspects of Western philosophy. But if you closely examine the political philosophy of the average American, they believe very strongly that the ends justify the means. They just lack the intellectual honesty of Emma Goldman to state so directly.
For instance almost no one believes that war is inherently a good thing. Even Hitler declared that he wished nothing but peace. But many people are willing to support war to achieve what they believe is a greater good. Therefore the 75% of Americans who initially supported the Iraq War believe on some level that the ends do justify the means. Anyone who supported the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam, or the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, believes the ends justify the means. Of course we all flinch when we see the phrase boldly and unapologetically stated, but for most people this belief underlies their philosophy.
But of course, anarchists make easy targets when they state so directly. When I was a Calvin student, “The Banner” ran an article criticizing Emma Goldman. The article seemed to come out of nowhere (Emma Goldman was not exactly a hot news topic at the time, and the quote was 70 years old) but anarchists made easy targets.
The article cited a anti-government quotation from Emma Goldman during the 1930s, and then said that Emma Goldman seemed like a spoiled child who only wanted the freedom to do what she wanted, and that she didn’t understand her responsibility to society went hand in hand with individual freedom.
I wrote a long letter to the editor saying that Emma Goldman was a social anarchist, and so to criticize her for excessive individualism showed an appalling lack of understanding about the difference between social anarchism and individual anarchism. Also the 1930s saw the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, so Emma Goldman’s fears about excessive government powers should be put in context.
The Banner actually printed a portion of my letter. It also printed a couple other letters arguing similar points. Buma, who worked as an intern for “The Banner” that summer, told me they were actually flooded with letters saying the author of the article didn’t know what she was talking about. Who knew so many anarchists read “The Banner”?
Anyway, the point is people like Emma Goldman seem to make easy targets whenever a magazine like “The Banner” is looking for a soft punching bag. Since “The Banner” seems to be in the habit of resurrecting obscure quotes from Emma Goldman and writing polemics against them, one can easily imagine, “the ends justify the means” being held up as an example of the violence of anarchism, without any corresponding reference made to state violence.
This is the way we are trained to think. In the recent documentary “The Weather Underground”, Mark Rudd says that the Weathermen failed to gain support because it is so strongly ingrained in the American psyche that institutional violence is acceptable, individual violence is not. That is why the massive bombing of civilians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not disturb people as much as the Weather Underground’s symbolic bombing of the Pentagon (which killed no one).
Or in Japan, the anarchist movement was characterized as violent because of attempts to assassinate the emperor, and the actual assassination of a few government officials in the 1920s. But a few years later the US, in its war against Imperial Japan, would kill millions of men women and children, and this is thought to be the acceptable cost of war.
So which is really more violent, anarchism or bourgeois democracy? Anarchists have not dropped nuclear bombs, or carpet-bombed civilian populations. And yet the dominant perception of anarchism is one of violence.
This was true in Emma Goldman’s time as well. There was widespread repression of anarchists after the assassination of President McKinley by nominal anarchist Leon Czolgosz. (Although Czolgosz was only on the fringes of the anarchist movement. He had failed to integrate himself into any actual anarchist groups because they thought he was a police spy).
Emma Goldman was imprisoned and tried in connection with McKinley’s assassination. When reporters interviewed her about the death of McKinley, she replied “is it possible that in the entire United States only the President passed away on this day? Surely many others have also died at the same time, perhaps in poverty and destitution, leaving helpless dependents behind. Why do you expect me to feel more regret over the death of McKinley than of the rest?”
But given the way anarchism has been villianized in the mainstream press, both in Emma Goldman’s time and in ours, the attitude of the mainstream USA seems to be anyone who supports a philosophy that leads to the assassination of one man is inhuman, anyone who supports a philosophy that drops two nuclear bombs on civilian cities is a patriot.
Video Version
Thursday, June 09, 2005
I encounter my German Friend Again
It’s always a bad idea here to get in a quarrel with another foreigner, because in the small circles we foreigners hang out in, it can be difficult to avoid meeting the other person.
My previous blog accountdetailed my first meeting with “Tom”, but in repeating the story I have discovered a lot of other people know him, and that Tom and I probably share a lot of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The information I hear about Tom is somewhat mixed. Apparently at times he can be the friendliest guy in the world, and who knows? If I had met him under different circumstances we might have become good friends.
On the other hand John had a story about how his Japanese girlfriend had to stop coming to a certain coffee shop because Tom would always harass her there. This is somewhat more consistent with the view of Tom I had acquired. And yet another friend is absolutely positive Tom is married to a Japanese woman, which makes the fact that he is harassing all these other girls even creepier yet.
I had found out that Tom is a frequent patron of “Beer Hall”, one of the local foreign hang outs here in Gifu city, and after hearing that I came there less often. Some of my friends felt I was being a bit of a wimp about the whole thing. “Look, you shouldn’t rearrange your social life because of this creep,” someone told me. “He was the one who was in the wrong, let him find a new place to hang out.”
But to a certain point, who was in the wrong is almost irrelevant. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of Tom personally, as the fact that encountering him again in a bar seemed like an awkward situation that I’d just assume avoid if at all possible. I continued going to Beer Hall if I had definite plans or was meeting friends, but I decided to stop just randomly dropping in on slow nights to see what was happening.
I encountered Tom once on the streets of Nagoya just by freak chance. I was with another friend, and I saw Tom coming the other way. I thought if I just ignored him it might be perceived as a sign of weakness or fear, so I just simply nodded at him as we passed each other. He glared at me in return. “Wow, he was not happy to see you,” my friend said after Tom had passed. “I know Tom as well, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. He just glared at you the whole time.” And then he added, “I’m pretty sure he’s married, by the way.”
That was about a month ago. And then I encountered Tom again last night at “Beer Hall”. Given the fact that we both frequent the bar, I suppose that I was just lucky before not to run into him.
Jorge, a Peruvian friend working in Japan, had organized a bit of a get together at Beer Hall. I had come early in the evening when there were just a handful of people there, but more and more people began coming in. Given how wide Jorge’s connections seemed to be, I was not entirely surprised when Tom arrived as well.
As I had written previously in this blog, my aversion to tense situations had caused me to be a bit flustered when I first met Tom. But, replaying the incident in my head, I think he had been slightly intimidated by me as well. If I just kept up a strong front and didn’t let Tom know his presence was unnerving me, I could keep the advantage. But, unfortunately the pressure of not becoming nervous made me all the more nervous.
Tom didn’t seem to have any more desire to encounter me, than I him. We were both in the same bar, but avoided each other the whole evening. Since I have been getting good mileage out of the story of our first encounter, and had retold it several times, all of my friends knew about the antagonism between us. “Hey, did you see who’s here?” someone would say to me. Or, “Did you notice your best friend is sitting over there?” I would just respond that as long as he stayed away from me, everything was all right.
At the end of the evening there was talk of going to another bar. I was a little uneasy about this. Avoiding Tom when we were in the same bar was one thing, but if I was in a group with him walking to the next bar, that was something that could not be done without awkwardness. When I heard Tom’s name in a list of people who would be going to the next bar, and when most of my friends decided to call it a night and head home, I gave my apologies to Jorge and said I was too tired to go out to another bar. Everyone sort of left at once, and to avoid bumping into Tom outside I stayed and ordered another Oolong Tea. (All my friends think I must save a ton of money by not drinking, but I swear I must spend almost as much money on tea as they do on alcohol. It just feels awkward to be in a bar and not be drinking something.)
As I got my tea I realized that everyone I knew had left the bar. Fortunately in Japan there is always an escape from the awkwardness of standing alone: the cell phone. Japanese people love to play with their cell phone. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and began surfing the net. Some drunken Japanese businessmen I was standing next to started practicing their English on me, and I sat down with them while I finished me drink. At one point Tom walked back into the bar for whatever reason, but I was engaged in conversation with my new friends and so was able to avoid him. He left again, but it did occur to me that me might realize I was deliberately staying behind in the bar to avoid him, and that might be taken as a sign of weakness. I finished my drink quickly, said good-by to me new friends, and then headed out the door.
I started walking towards my car, and then saw Jorge and Tom and a few others waiting at the crosswalk. Despite the head start I had given them, they must have milled around by the door for a while. I thought about heading the other way, but again I didn’t want Tom to think I was deliberately avoiding him. I arrived at the crosswalk and talked with Jorge over Tom’s head.
“Did you decide to come with us after all?” Jorge asked.
“No, not tonight. But shouldn’t you guys be headed in the opposite direction?” I asked.
“We’re going to get his car first,” Jorge said, gesturing to another friend who had a car.
“My car’s parked over in the same direction,” I said. “I’ll walk with you a little ways.” Actually the last thing I wanted to do was walk with this group a little ways, but I was making a point of acting like I was not at all disturbed by Tom.
Jorge didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish, so we communicated in Japanese. At this point Tom, who apparently spoke several languages, launched into Spanish and cut me out of the conversation. I wasn’t able to understand what was being said, but because I caught my own name and I could see them gesturing to me, I knew I was the subject.
I could tell Tom was asking a lot of questions about me, and I could tell that Jorge, by his smile, and his friendly gestures towards me, was saying nothing but good things.
Eventually we came to the spot where our paths diverged. Although I had been walking right next to Tom, we hadn’t said a word to each other the whole evening. Instead I reached over Tom to shake hands with Jorge and said my good byes. And then I left.
The following day I was talking to a friend who was also at the bar, who mentioned how much Tom was glaring at me. I really didn’t even notice it at the time, but found it somewhat disturbing nonetheless. “Boy, what is he still mad about?” I asked. “The way he’s still acting upset after all these months, you would think I was the one who had been out of line.” Actually, from Tom’s perspective I probably was.
My previous blog accountdetailed my first meeting with “Tom”, but in repeating the story I have discovered a lot of other people know him, and that Tom and I probably share a lot of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The information I hear about Tom is somewhat mixed. Apparently at times he can be the friendliest guy in the world, and who knows? If I had met him under different circumstances we might have become good friends.
On the other hand John had a story about how his Japanese girlfriend had to stop coming to a certain coffee shop because Tom would always harass her there. This is somewhat more consistent with the view of Tom I had acquired. And yet another friend is absolutely positive Tom is married to a Japanese woman, which makes the fact that he is harassing all these other girls even creepier yet.
I had found out that Tom is a frequent patron of “Beer Hall”, one of the local foreign hang outs here in Gifu city, and after hearing that I came there less often. Some of my friends felt I was being a bit of a wimp about the whole thing. “Look, you shouldn’t rearrange your social life because of this creep,” someone told me. “He was the one who was in the wrong, let him find a new place to hang out.”
But to a certain point, who was in the wrong is almost irrelevant. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of Tom personally, as the fact that encountering him again in a bar seemed like an awkward situation that I’d just assume avoid if at all possible. I continued going to Beer Hall if I had definite plans or was meeting friends, but I decided to stop just randomly dropping in on slow nights to see what was happening.
I encountered Tom once on the streets of Nagoya just by freak chance. I was with another friend, and I saw Tom coming the other way. I thought if I just ignored him it might be perceived as a sign of weakness or fear, so I just simply nodded at him as we passed each other. He glared at me in return. “Wow, he was not happy to see you,” my friend said after Tom had passed. “I know Tom as well, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. He just glared at you the whole time.” And then he added, “I’m pretty sure he’s married, by the way.”
That was about a month ago. And then I encountered Tom again last night at “Beer Hall”. Given the fact that we both frequent the bar, I suppose that I was just lucky before not to run into him.
Jorge, a Peruvian friend working in Japan, had organized a bit of a get together at Beer Hall. I had come early in the evening when there were just a handful of people there, but more and more people began coming in. Given how wide Jorge’s connections seemed to be, I was not entirely surprised when Tom arrived as well.
As I had written previously in this blog, my aversion to tense situations had caused me to be a bit flustered when I first met Tom. But, replaying the incident in my head, I think he had been slightly intimidated by me as well. If I just kept up a strong front and didn’t let Tom know his presence was unnerving me, I could keep the advantage. But, unfortunately the pressure of not becoming nervous made me all the more nervous.
Tom didn’t seem to have any more desire to encounter me, than I him. We were both in the same bar, but avoided each other the whole evening. Since I have been getting good mileage out of the story of our first encounter, and had retold it several times, all of my friends knew about the antagonism between us. “Hey, did you see who’s here?” someone would say to me. Or, “Did you notice your best friend is sitting over there?” I would just respond that as long as he stayed away from me, everything was all right.
At the end of the evening there was talk of going to another bar. I was a little uneasy about this. Avoiding Tom when we were in the same bar was one thing, but if I was in a group with him walking to the next bar, that was something that could not be done without awkwardness. When I heard Tom’s name in a list of people who would be going to the next bar, and when most of my friends decided to call it a night and head home, I gave my apologies to Jorge and said I was too tired to go out to another bar. Everyone sort of left at once, and to avoid bumping into Tom outside I stayed and ordered another Oolong Tea. (All my friends think I must save a ton of money by not drinking, but I swear I must spend almost as much money on tea as they do on alcohol. It just feels awkward to be in a bar and not be drinking something.)
As I got my tea I realized that everyone I knew had left the bar. Fortunately in Japan there is always an escape from the awkwardness of standing alone: the cell phone. Japanese people love to play with their cell phone. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and began surfing the net. Some drunken Japanese businessmen I was standing next to started practicing their English on me, and I sat down with them while I finished me drink. At one point Tom walked back into the bar for whatever reason, but I was engaged in conversation with my new friends and so was able to avoid him. He left again, but it did occur to me that me might realize I was deliberately staying behind in the bar to avoid him, and that might be taken as a sign of weakness. I finished my drink quickly, said good-by to me new friends, and then headed out the door.
I started walking towards my car, and then saw Jorge and Tom and a few others waiting at the crosswalk. Despite the head start I had given them, they must have milled around by the door for a while. I thought about heading the other way, but again I didn’t want Tom to think I was deliberately avoiding him. I arrived at the crosswalk and talked with Jorge over Tom’s head.
“Did you decide to come with us after all?” Jorge asked.
“No, not tonight. But shouldn’t you guys be headed in the opposite direction?” I asked.
“We’re going to get his car first,” Jorge said, gesturing to another friend who had a car.
“My car’s parked over in the same direction,” I said. “I’ll walk with you a little ways.” Actually the last thing I wanted to do was walk with this group a little ways, but I was making a point of acting like I was not at all disturbed by Tom.
Jorge didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Spanish, so we communicated in Japanese. At this point Tom, who apparently spoke several languages, launched into Spanish and cut me out of the conversation. I wasn’t able to understand what was being said, but because I caught my own name and I could see them gesturing to me, I knew I was the subject.
I could tell Tom was asking a lot of questions about me, and I could tell that Jorge, by his smile, and his friendly gestures towards me, was saying nothing but good things.
Eventually we came to the spot where our paths diverged. Although I had been walking right next to Tom, we hadn’t said a word to each other the whole evening. Instead I reached over Tom to shake hands with Jorge and said my good byes. And then I left.
The following day I was talking to a friend who was also at the bar, who mentioned how much Tom was glaring at me. I really didn’t even notice it at the time, but found it somewhat disturbing nonetheless. “Boy, what is he still mad about?” I asked. “The way he’s still acting upset after all these months, you would think I was the one who had been out of line.” Actually, from Tom’s perspective I probably was.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Three nights a week after work I take Japanese classes with some other English teachers, but we are often tired from working all day and it can be hard to study at night. Our teacher understands this, and so she sometimes just lets us practice our Japanese by conversation instead of studying grammar points.
“Has there been anything interesting in the news recently?” she asked.
“They finally found out who ‘Deep Throat’ is,” I answered. Because our teacher was Japanese, she didn’t understand who Deep Throat was, and we had to struggle to explain it in Japanese (good practice).
After class, I was talking to a girl who had arrived late. “What did I miss?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” I responded. “We just talked about ‘Deep Throat’ for the whole first half hour.”
She turned to me shocked. “You're joking!”
“No, I’m serious.”
In an accusatory tone she demanded, “What were you guys doing talking about deep throating with our Japanese teacher?”
Even though she was a fellow American, it turns out she had no idea who the historical “Deep Throat” was, and had only known the term in connection with the sexual act. I compared this with my own development, in which I had known about “Deep Throat” the person long before I realized the word actually had sexual connotations. In fact it wasn’t until my history class at Calvin, when the professor said the term “Deep Throat” came from a popular porno movie at the time, that I finally made the connection. Shows what a geek I am.
Ah, Nixon…All the people he killed in Vietnam, and now his most lasting legacy is that a pornographic movie has become forever part of our history books.
Of course the same irony is true for Clinton. He presided over the period of greatest economic expansion, and now he will be remembered for an X-rated special prosecutors report dealing with cigars and interns, that is also now part of the historical record.
“Has there been anything interesting in the news recently?” she asked.
“They finally found out who ‘Deep Throat’ is,” I answered. Because our teacher was Japanese, she didn’t understand who Deep Throat was, and we had to struggle to explain it in Japanese (good practice).
After class, I was talking to a girl who had arrived late. “What did I miss?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” I responded. “We just talked about ‘Deep Throat’ for the whole first half hour.”
She turned to me shocked. “You're joking!”
“No, I’m serious.”
In an accusatory tone she demanded, “What were you guys doing talking about deep throating with our Japanese teacher?”
Even though she was a fellow American, it turns out she had no idea who the historical “Deep Throat” was, and had only known the term in connection with the sexual act. I compared this with my own development, in which I had known about “Deep Throat” the person long before I realized the word actually had sexual connotations. In fact it wasn’t until my history class at Calvin, when the professor said the term “Deep Throat” came from a popular porno movie at the time, that I finally made the connection. Shows what a geek I am.
Ah, Nixon…All the people he killed in Vietnam, and now his most lasting legacy is that a pornographic movie has become forever part of our history books.
Of course the same irony is true for Clinton. He presided over the period of greatest economic expansion, and now he will be remembered for an X-rated special prosecutors report dealing with cigars and interns, that is also now part of the historical record.
Thoughts on Orwell
Other books I’ve been re-reading lately are “Animal Farm” and “1984” by George Orwell. (All right, I’ve got a small confession to make. I’m not physically reading all these books; I’ve got them on CD. Same with the previously mentioned “Tale of Two Cities”. But I’m absorbing them nonetheless.)
Orwell has got to be one of the most quoted and least read authors around. He has become the darling of the American right, many of whom don’t even know that, although Orwell’s later works were certainly anti-communist, Orwell himself was a democratic Socialist. For instance Ann Coulter, right wing columnist, quotes Orwell in her books without ever mentioning he’s a Socialist.
I should admit I’m no expert on the exact state of Orwell’s political evolution at the time he wrote “Animal Farm” or “1984”, but a simple reading of the books is evidence enough that Orwell would be in awkward company with today’s right wing.
For instance his main criticism of communism in “Animal Farm” is that the communist abandon their original ideals to imitate the capitalists. The return of organized religion is what Orwell regards as the final corruption of the communist regime. And at the end of the book, the ultimate horror is that the communists morph into the capitalists they replaced.
As for “1984”, a large part of this book deals with the sexual suppression enforced by the totalitarian regime. The first step towards rebellion against totalitarianism is sexual freedom. Hardly the ideology of today’s religious right.
Conservatives love to apply “1984” to liberal big government programs, but from my re-reading of the book, the most shocking comparisons are to the Bush administration. I know I’m not the first person to point this out, and that the whole debate about “Who does ‘1984’ apply to more?” is a childish game, but just for fun consider these comparisons:
1. Anyone who has actually read “1984”will remember the 3 slogans of the party, “War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.” Now is it just me, or does this sound remarkably similar to the speech George W. Bush gave in which he actually said, “When we talk about war, we are really talking about peace.” Of course this was a reflection of a larger conservative argument which was popular at the time. The argument went that anyone for peace was really only delaying an inevitably conflict, and so those of us for peace were really “pro-war.” Now how Orwellian is that? The only way you can be for peace is to support the war? The people in favor of invading a foreign land that had never attacked us, were actually the people for peace?
(Appearently I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bit too close to 1984)
2. In “1984”, the government deliberately keeps the country in a constant state of warfare in order to be able to appeal to the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice as an excuse for giving up freedoms. Sound familiar?
3. In “1984” the world has been reduced to only 3 super powers. At any given time the government is always at war with one of them, and at peace with the other. Since enemy at the time is always defined as the definition of pure evil, it stands to reason there could never have been any alliances in the past, and so the history books are always being changed so that the country the government is currently fighting becomes the country the government has always been fighting, and has never been aligned with.
Now, granted in the US we aren’t physically changing the history books yet, but it does seem that in preparation for the Iraq War, and in the need to define Saddam as the ultimate evil, US support of Iraq during the 1980s was brushed under the rug a bit.
4. And of course there is the comparison between the “1984” government’s campaign to abolish the sex drive, and Bush’s push for abstinence education. (All right, admittedly this last one is a bit of a stretch. If you think I’m stretching here just go up and re-read the first 3).
So, I put it to you, of all the conservatives who love to quote Orwell, how many of them do you think have actually read his books?
Orwell has got to be one of the most quoted and least read authors around. He has become the darling of the American right, many of whom don’t even know that, although Orwell’s later works were certainly anti-communist, Orwell himself was a democratic Socialist. For instance Ann Coulter, right wing columnist, quotes Orwell in her books without ever mentioning he’s a Socialist.
I should admit I’m no expert on the exact state of Orwell’s political evolution at the time he wrote “Animal Farm” or “1984”, but a simple reading of the books is evidence enough that Orwell would be in awkward company with today’s right wing.
For instance his main criticism of communism in “Animal Farm” is that the communist abandon their original ideals to imitate the capitalists. The return of organized religion is what Orwell regards as the final corruption of the communist regime. And at the end of the book, the ultimate horror is that the communists morph into the capitalists they replaced.
As for “1984”, a large part of this book deals with the sexual suppression enforced by the totalitarian regime. The first step towards rebellion against totalitarianism is sexual freedom. Hardly the ideology of today’s religious right.
Conservatives love to apply “1984” to liberal big government programs, but from my re-reading of the book, the most shocking comparisons are to the Bush administration. I know I’m not the first person to point this out, and that the whole debate about “Who does ‘1984’ apply to more?” is a childish game, but just for fun consider these comparisons:
1. Anyone who has actually read “1984”will remember the 3 slogans of the party, “War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.” Now is it just me, or does this sound remarkably similar to the speech George W. Bush gave in which he actually said, “When we talk about war, we are really talking about peace.” Of course this was a reflection of a larger conservative argument which was popular at the time. The argument went that anyone for peace was really only delaying an inevitably conflict, and so those of us for peace were really “pro-war.” Now how Orwellian is that? The only way you can be for peace is to support the war? The people in favor of invading a foreign land that had never attacked us, were actually the people for peace?
(Appearently I'm not the only one who thinks this is a bit too close to 1984)
2. In “1984”, the government deliberately keeps the country in a constant state of warfare in order to be able to appeal to the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice as an excuse for giving up freedoms. Sound familiar?
3. In “1984” the world has been reduced to only 3 super powers. At any given time the government is always at war with one of them, and at peace with the other. Since enemy at the time is always defined as the definition of pure evil, it stands to reason there could never have been any alliances in the past, and so the history books are always being changed so that the country the government is currently fighting becomes the country the government has always been fighting, and has never been aligned with.
Now, granted in the US we aren’t physically changing the history books yet, but it does seem that in preparation for the Iraq War, and in the need to define Saddam as the ultimate evil, US support of Iraq during the 1980s was brushed under the rug a bit.
4. And of course there is the comparison between the “1984” government’s campaign to abolish the sex drive, and Bush’s push for abstinence education. (All right, admittedly this last one is a bit of a stretch. If you think I’m stretching here just go up and re-read the first 3).
So, I put it to you, of all the conservatives who love to quote Orwell, how many of them do you think have actually read his books?
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Wasting time on the Net
A Canadian friend of mine sent me this link to a video of George Galloway testifying before the Sentate. I am told this has gotten lots of coverage in the Canadian and British media, but very little in the American. I'm not in a position to vouch for either, but if you haven't seen it yet, click on it. As my Canadian friend said to me, it is a sad state of affairs in the American democracy when a foreigner is the only one with the courage to point this out.
And moving to the low brow: This is the funniest video I've ever seen on line. If you need a good laugh, watch World of Warcraft with Leeroy. It's about "An overly enthusiastic gamer goes full force and pisses off the rest of his team." Hard to tell who the bigger nerd is, these guys for playing it, or me for watching it so many times.
And moving to the low brow: This is the funniest video I've ever seen on line. If you need a good laugh, watch World of Warcraft with Leeroy. It's about "An overly enthusiastic gamer goes full force and pisses off the rest of his team." Hard to tell who the bigger nerd is, these guys for playing it, or me for watching it so many times.
Monday, June 06, 2005
I Encourage Japanese Nationalism
I was in the teacher’s room at the elementary school one day, and looked out the window to see the students lowering the flag after school. After they removed the Japanese flag from the pole, they simply threw it in a heap on the dirt ground while they lowered the town flag. Observing this, I asked the other teachers if flag etiquette in Japan was different than in the US.
The site of seeing the flag dropped on the ground was so common to them that it took them a while to understand what I was talking about. Then they debated briefly among themselves what the proper etiquette was, and finally a teacher said, “Actually, it’s probably bad manners even in Japan.”
“I don’t care,” I quickly said. “I was just curious, because this seems to be a point of difference between our two countries.”
But the teacher was already at the window, where he shouted to the students that they shouldn’t let the flag touch the ground. “Joel is very disturbed by the way you are treating the Japanese flag,” he told the students.
“No, really, I don’t care,” I tried to say. “I was just asking.”
The following week the principle apologized to me. “I’m sorry about what happened to the flag last week,” he said. “I heard you were upset.”
“Honestly, I didn’t care,” I said. You have to be careful what you say in Japan because of the tendency Japanese people have to read into your comments.
But it is interesting the difference in flag etiquette. That very evening I was in a bar with some other AlTs, and, without me even bringing the subject up, someone recounted what they had observed at their school that afternoon.
Interesting enough his story takes place in a high school, so the kids are that much older. Apparently a Japanese high school girl is lowering the flag at the end of the day, and then drops it in a pile in the dirt. Walking over to lower the school flag, she steps on the Japanese flag and gets her foot caught in a hole in the flag. She then does a bit of a dance trying to shake the flag off of her foot, and eventually succeeds in freeing her foot by stepping down on the flag with the other foot. Apparently no one else in the teacher’s room watching the scene thought it was the least bit out of the ordinary.
So there does appear to be some difference in etiquette. The teachers at the elementary school told me that since Japan lost the war, they don’t take pride in their country as much as we Americans do.
Shoko also offered a bit of an alternative explanation. As with the National Anthem, the Japanese flag is associated with the right wing and with the Wartime atrocities. There are a lot of people who think it shouldn’t even be at school in the first place, and so flag etiquette is not strictly enforced. “In America you love your flag so much,” Shoko said. “When I was in America, everywhere I went I saw the American flag. We Japanese are ashamed of our flag.”
The site of seeing the flag dropped on the ground was so common to them that it took them a while to understand what I was talking about. Then they debated briefly among themselves what the proper etiquette was, and finally a teacher said, “Actually, it’s probably bad manners even in Japan.”
“I don’t care,” I quickly said. “I was just curious, because this seems to be a point of difference between our two countries.”
But the teacher was already at the window, where he shouted to the students that they shouldn’t let the flag touch the ground. “Joel is very disturbed by the way you are treating the Japanese flag,” he told the students.
“No, really, I don’t care,” I tried to say. “I was just asking.”
The following week the principle apologized to me. “I’m sorry about what happened to the flag last week,” he said. “I heard you were upset.”
“Honestly, I didn’t care,” I said. You have to be careful what you say in Japan because of the tendency Japanese people have to read into your comments.
But it is interesting the difference in flag etiquette. That very evening I was in a bar with some other AlTs, and, without me even bringing the subject up, someone recounted what they had observed at their school that afternoon.
Interesting enough his story takes place in a high school, so the kids are that much older. Apparently a Japanese high school girl is lowering the flag at the end of the day, and then drops it in a pile in the dirt. Walking over to lower the school flag, she steps on the Japanese flag and gets her foot caught in a hole in the flag. She then does a bit of a dance trying to shake the flag off of her foot, and eventually succeeds in freeing her foot by stepping down on the flag with the other foot. Apparently no one else in the teacher’s room watching the scene thought it was the least bit out of the ordinary.
So there does appear to be some difference in etiquette. The teachers at the elementary school told me that since Japan lost the war, they don’t take pride in their country as much as we Americans do.
Shoko also offered a bit of an alternative explanation. As with the National Anthem, the Japanese flag is associated with the right wing and with the Wartime atrocities. There are a lot of people who think it shouldn’t even be at school in the first place, and so flag etiquette is not strictly enforced. “In America you love your flag so much,” Shoko said. “When I was in America, everywhere I went I saw the American flag. We Japanese are ashamed of our flag.”
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Random Thoughts
Here’s another observation: I just finished re-reading “A Tale of Two Cities”, and it strikes me that this should be made into a movie. I know it’s already been made into a movie, but it should be made into a movie again. So much of the book reads just like a movie anyway, it would be perfect for the big screen.
I’ve often wondered if books are different now than they were before the advent of movies. Most people watch more movies than they read books, so perhaps today’s authors find themselves heavily influenced by the big screen, and write books that start to resemble screen plays. I’ve not done any research into this question, or attempted to compare literature or anything like that. It’s just a thought that wanders into my brains sometimes. Perhaps some of you who are more knowledgeable than I about literature could shed some light on this question.
But the interesting thing about Dickens is his book, well before the invention of movies, already was resembling a screenplay. Not all of it. There are a lot of long and windy parts (I’m told Dickens got paid by the word), and there would be a lot of parts that would have to be chopped out to make the transition to the screen.
But the parts that would be left would very easily transfer to the screen. I’m thinking specifically of some of the court scenes, or the scenes that take place in Paris. The say the characters seem to talk to each other in memorable one-liners, the way the drama is built up in the conversation leading towards some sort of revelation, the way most of the story is revealed in the character’s dialogue rather than by the author. It all seems perfect for the screen.
Video version HERE
I’ve often wondered if books are different now than they were before the advent of movies. Most people watch more movies than they read books, so perhaps today’s authors find themselves heavily influenced by the big screen, and write books that start to resemble screen plays. I’ve not done any research into this question, or attempted to compare literature or anything like that. It’s just a thought that wanders into my brains sometimes. Perhaps some of you who are more knowledgeable than I about literature could shed some light on this question.
But the interesting thing about Dickens is his book, well before the invention of movies, already was resembling a screenplay. Not all of it. There are a lot of long and windy parts (I’m told Dickens got paid by the word), and there would be a lot of parts that would have to be chopped out to make the transition to the screen.
But the parts that would be left would very easily transfer to the screen. I’m thinking specifically of some of the court scenes, or the scenes that take place in Paris. The say the characters seem to talk to each other in memorable one-liners, the way the drama is built up in the conversation leading towards some sort of revelation, the way most of the story is revealed in the character’s dialogue rather than by the author. It all seems perfect for the screen.
Video version HERE
Friday, June 03, 2005
Driving License Renewal
During my first two years in Japan I didn’t have this blog up and running, and so I never wrote about the hassle of getting my Japanese drivers license. But it was a huge pain in the neck. Nothing is ever easy in Japan. Last week I had to renew the same Japanese driver’s license.
Renewing your license in the US is relatively painless. You just show up, get a new photo taken, and leave. In Japan it’s a bit more of a process.
For starters, they only do it from 1 to 1:20 on Monday thru Thursday. How is that for a convenient time? I showed up the previous week at 2 in the afternoon, only to have the lady say, “We already finished doing this today. Too bad for you.” At this point the other customers started laughing a bit, and I felt like everyone was taking advantage of this to have a good laugh at the foreigner. I said that I have work at the scheduled times, but they couldn’t care less.
So the following week I rearranged some of my classes so I could take the afternoon off, and went down to take care of the license. After filling out the usual forms, going through the eye checks, and getting our pictures taken, everyone went into a classroom for a two-hour class on driver’s safety. And here I thought I would be getting my picture taken and out the door. At least now it makes a bit more sense why they are so strict on the time.
The one cool thing about driving license renewal is it’s one of the few times you get packed into a room with people from all walks of life. Everyone has to renew their license at one time or another, so there are old people, young people, businessmen and construction workers and people with punk hairstyles. And then there is me, the only foreigner in the room. We have assigned seats, so I’m sitting in the middle, but barely fitting into the Japanese size desk, and when they showed the video I was pretty sure I was obstructing the view of the people behind me.
“This is going to be pretty confusing for you if you don’t understand Japanese,” the instructor said to me.
“I understand a little,” I said (indeed, we were saying all this in Japanese, so the fact that I was a somewhat proficient should have been self evident.)
Nevertheless, it was a long couple hours trying to follow the class. If you thought these kind of things were boring when they were in your native language, well, just imagine.
But there was one thing that was almost funny enough to make the whole thing worthwhile. At one point during the class, the instructor said, “Okay, everyone turn to page 8 of your text. There is some special advice printed there for woman drivers that you women in the class should take note of.” The page listed all the weak points of women drivers. I kept waiting for the instructor to point out the page for male weaknesses, but it turned out there was no such page. There was a page, however, for young drivers, and another one for old drivers, but no page for male drivers.
I took the textbook with me to Japanese class that night, and the other Westerners and I had a good laugh trying to read what they had written about women drivers. “Many women don’t understand the rules of the road,” said one point. “A lot of women don’t pay attention to what is going on right in front of them,” said another point.
“In America you could never say this,” I explained to the Japanese teacher. “People would get real upset.”
The Japanese teacher found our reaction to the textbook more interesting than the text itself. “I guess when you’re all laughing, it does seem a bit strange, but I would never have thought twice about it otherwise,” she said.
Renewing your license in the US is relatively painless. You just show up, get a new photo taken, and leave. In Japan it’s a bit more of a process.
For starters, they only do it from 1 to 1:20 on Monday thru Thursday. How is that for a convenient time? I showed up the previous week at 2 in the afternoon, only to have the lady say, “We already finished doing this today. Too bad for you.” At this point the other customers started laughing a bit, and I felt like everyone was taking advantage of this to have a good laugh at the foreigner. I said that I have work at the scheduled times, but they couldn’t care less.
So the following week I rearranged some of my classes so I could take the afternoon off, and went down to take care of the license. After filling out the usual forms, going through the eye checks, and getting our pictures taken, everyone went into a classroom for a two-hour class on driver’s safety. And here I thought I would be getting my picture taken and out the door. At least now it makes a bit more sense why they are so strict on the time.
The one cool thing about driving license renewal is it’s one of the few times you get packed into a room with people from all walks of life. Everyone has to renew their license at one time or another, so there are old people, young people, businessmen and construction workers and people with punk hairstyles. And then there is me, the only foreigner in the room. We have assigned seats, so I’m sitting in the middle, but barely fitting into the Japanese size desk, and when they showed the video I was pretty sure I was obstructing the view of the people behind me.
“This is going to be pretty confusing for you if you don’t understand Japanese,” the instructor said to me.
“I understand a little,” I said (indeed, we were saying all this in Japanese, so the fact that I was a somewhat proficient should have been self evident.)
Nevertheless, it was a long couple hours trying to follow the class. If you thought these kind of things were boring when they were in your native language, well, just imagine.
But there was one thing that was almost funny enough to make the whole thing worthwhile. At one point during the class, the instructor said, “Okay, everyone turn to page 8 of your text. There is some special advice printed there for woman drivers that you women in the class should take note of.” The page listed all the weak points of women drivers. I kept waiting for the instructor to point out the page for male weaknesses, but it turned out there was no such page. There was a page, however, for young drivers, and another one for old drivers, but no page for male drivers.
I took the textbook with me to Japanese class that night, and the other Westerners and I had a good laugh trying to read what they had written about women drivers. “Many women don’t understand the rules of the road,” said one point. “A lot of women don’t pay attention to what is going on right in front of them,” said another point.
“In America you could never say this,” I explained to the Japanese teacher. “People would get real upset.”
The Japanese teacher found our reaction to the textbook more interesting than the text itself. “I guess when you’re all laughing, it does seem a bit strange, but I would never have thought twice about it otherwise,” she said.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Back Story 7: School of the Americas
I had not been politically active in High School, although it was not for lack of opportunity. There was an Amnesty group, an environmental group, a chapter of the Young Republicans and Young Democrats and various other opportunities for involvement, but it was not what I was interested in. And truth be told, even if I had been interested, at that stage of my life I would have been more inclined to join the Young Republicans than the Young Democrats.
But my interests changed and when I entered Calvin I resolved to make up for lost time in High School by joining every progressive group I could. I joined them all my freshman year, and then dropped out of them all halfway through my sophomore year.
Because of my reserved personality, I felt like I was simply sitting in on the meetings and watching them take place, without really taking an active part. At first I was happy just to be there, but more and more I began to think that I was contributing nothing to these groups, and that they would function just the same if I wasn’t there.
So I dropped out of everything, and didn't get involved again until my Senior year, when my girlfriend encouraged me to do so. I started re-attending the meetings of the Social Justice Committee. I noticed that all of the upper class men who had intimidated me during my first couple years at school were suddenly gone, and the meetings were filled with friends from my own grade or younger students. I was no longer shy about speaking my own opinion, and became increasingly vocal in the group and started to enjoy myself. Then I rejoined every group I could: the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, the Calvin Liberals and Democrats (after Austin reformed it), and, with my girlfriend's encouragement, I even attended a few meetings of the Calvin feminists.
Although from the latter I kept my distance a bit. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with what they were saying, but they never embarked on any projects I felt like I could get enthusiastic about. For instance during the Spring there was a protest march against date rape taking place in Grand Rapids, which the Calvin feminists attended. My girlfriend was very excited about this protest, and somewhat upset by my refusal to attend, especially given my willingness to protest just about everything else that year.
I tried to explain my protest philosophy. “I protest government policies that I want changed,” I said. “I don’t protest just bad things that happen. If you had a protest against murder, do you think the murderers would stop? Are you going to protest against earthquakes and hurricanes next?” She couldn’t respond to this, and so I won the argument but there are times, (and perhaps some of you can identify with this) when decisively winning an argument gets you into more trouble than if you had just let it go. She went to the protest anyway and marched down the street chanting slogans like, “Hey hey, ho ho, date rape has got to go!”
But I’m digressing now and probably needlessly offending anyone who was ever been involved with the Calvin Feminists. The point is that I rejoined a lot of these groups, and found the makeup of them a lot different than I remembered.
The Social Justice Committee (it had been known as The Progressives during my Freshman and Sophomore year) now seemed to be dominated by underclassmen, showing that not everyone had to wait until they were a senior before they felt confident speaking out. One of the projects they had undertaken was to attend the annual protests against the School of the Americas. The first trip had been the previous year, so many of the sophomores were already veterans by the time I joined my senior year.
The faculty mentor, a Calvin professor, gave us this word of advice before we set out. “Last year there was a lot of bad things said about the Calvin group to the SOA protest,” he said. “People said some of them were only going on the trip for fun, or to be with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever. If you go on this trip, you need to take it very seriously. There are hundreds of people dead because of this school in Georgia. It’s no joke.”
And so while we were on the trip, I think we all tried to keep a somber and reverent attitude. But in spite of the tragedy we were confronting, our natural inclination was to be up beat. In fact, I think anytime you get a group of young people together, the atmosphere automatically becomes joyful. There were a few people on the trip who could really make me laugh hard, and we did a lot of laughing on the van ride down, and for the whole weekend in general.
For me the highlight of the whole trip was seeing Pete Seeger, who performed at the protest. I saw him play twice, once at the large rally in the afternoon, and again in a smaller auditorium in a workshop on non-violence. It was an amazing thing to be in the same room as such a legend.
His singing voice was pretty much gone, and he couldn’t sing without being accompanied by his grandson. But when he spoke in between songs, his voice sounded as clear as a bell, and it sounded exactly the same as the old records I had listened to growing up. (When I was a child I had a copy of his record “Pete Seeger’s songs about Animals”, which I must have listened to a hundred times. Of course I had no idea who he was at the time, and it wasn’t until I was 19 and bought one of his CDs that I realized the voice on the CD was the same one I had listened to on the record years ago.)
As in previous years, Sunday was the day when people would walk on to the base. Although the protest was entirely peaceful, it was illegal to protest on the actual base itself, and doing so could mean arrest. The previous year thousands of people had crossed the base to protest, and the police couldn’t arrest them all, so they had simply been loaded onto buses and driven away. We were pretty sure the same thing was going to happen, although there were no guarantees.
Opinion was somewhat split among the Calvin group. Some people felt that it was not okay to break the law even if it was in a non-violent way, and so opted not to walk onto the base. Others had class they had to return for on Monday, and so could not afford to take the risk of being arrested or detained by the police. About half of us chose to cross the line and walk onto the base.
We walked in an orderly line with thousands of other people, and proceeded down the road until the police stopped the march. At which point people just sat down on the road, and waited for the police to remove them. Following classic civil disobedience strategy, we were not resisting the police, but we were not cooperating with them either. We would refuse to remove ourselves from the base until they physically removed us.
Or at least that was the plan. But as we sat on the ground, the police continued to walk up and down the road reminding people, “The buses are here. Anytime you want to load yourself on the bus, just go ahead and climb on.”
It was a hot day. We left our spot on the road to sit under the shade of a tree on the grass. We were talking there for a while, until a nun came up to us and said, “We’re trying to get people to stay on the road. We want to keep the atmosphere here somber in order to remember the people who were killed, and we don’t want it turning into a festive, picnic like atmosphere like it did last year. So do you think you could go back to the road?”
I didn’t see how being excessively somber would help the people who were already dead, but how could we argue with a nun? So we returned to the road. But a while later I noticed some of my friends had returned to the grass, and I joined them.
There were literally thousands of people, and we were quite a ways back in the crowd. We knew that if we waitedl for the police to remove everyone ahead of us, we would be there all day. And so eventually someone proposed the idea of voluntarily loading ourselves up on the bus.
On one level voluntary putting ourselves on the bus and removing ourselves seemed to defeat the whole idea of civil disobedience. And yet what difference did it make if the police had to escort us to the bus, or if we came to the buses ourselves? Did it make a real difference if we waited until the police came to our line, or could we just skip ahead of some of the people in front of us?
The point was debated for a little bit. Someone mentioned the classes they had on Monday morning, which, if it was all the same anyway, he would just assume not miss. Someone else said she had traveled all this way with the intent of protesting, and thought voluntarily loading herself on the bus defeated the whole purpose.
I kept silent the whole time. My conscious was with the girl who wanted to be true to the spirit of civil disobedience to the end, but we had already been sitting on the ground for several hours now, and part of me was hoping that the other side would win. When we finally took a vote on it, I abstained, but was secretly relieved when the other side won.
Very similar discussions were going on in a lot of the groups around us. One group of students sitting next to us had been discussing the question in passionate tones for a long time. I didn’t catch everything that they said, but I saw them vote, and then revote, and then argue some more, and then finally agree to voluntarily load themselves up on the bus. They continued singing protest songs as they stood up and left their spot to walk on the bus, singing: “We shall not be moved.” The irony of this seemed to be lost on all of them but one at the back of the line who pleaded, “Guys, guys, can we please sing something else. Guys I really don’t think this song is appropriate right now.” She struggled to make herself heard above their singing, and eventually left her place at the back of the line to run up to the front where she persuaded the song leader to adopt a different tune.
Our group loaded ourselves up on the bus with not quite as much drama. The buses were regularly getting filled up and then driven out of the base. We were dropped off just outside of the base, and then regrouped and left for home later that afternoon.
One of the group later wrote up this article for Chimes. He e-mailed us all for thoughts or quotes, and I e-mailed him back some stuff that ended up getting put in the article.
The following year I was unable to attend the protest because I was student teaching, and couldn’t take an absence. (Yet another example of making politics subservient to student teaching). Instead, I wrote up this Chimes article the week before the protest as my contribution.
But my interests changed and when I entered Calvin I resolved to make up for lost time in High School by joining every progressive group I could. I joined them all my freshman year, and then dropped out of them all halfway through my sophomore year.
Because of my reserved personality, I felt like I was simply sitting in on the meetings and watching them take place, without really taking an active part. At first I was happy just to be there, but more and more I began to think that I was contributing nothing to these groups, and that they would function just the same if I wasn’t there.
So I dropped out of everything, and didn't get involved again until my Senior year, when my girlfriend encouraged me to do so. I started re-attending the meetings of the Social Justice Committee. I noticed that all of the upper class men who had intimidated me during my first couple years at school were suddenly gone, and the meetings were filled with friends from my own grade or younger students. I was no longer shy about speaking my own opinion, and became increasingly vocal in the group and started to enjoy myself. Then I rejoined every group I could: the Environmental Stewardship Coalition, the Calvin Liberals and Democrats (after Austin reformed it), and, with my girlfriend's encouragement, I even attended a few meetings of the Calvin feminists.
Although from the latter I kept my distance a bit. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with what they were saying, but they never embarked on any projects I felt like I could get enthusiastic about. For instance during the Spring there was a protest march against date rape taking place in Grand Rapids, which the Calvin feminists attended. My girlfriend was very excited about this protest, and somewhat upset by my refusal to attend, especially given my willingness to protest just about everything else that year.
I tried to explain my protest philosophy. “I protest government policies that I want changed,” I said. “I don’t protest just bad things that happen. If you had a protest against murder, do you think the murderers would stop? Are you going to protest against earthquakes and hurricanes next?” She couldn’t respond to this, and so I won the argument but there are times, (and perhaps some of you can identify with this) when decisively winning an argument gets you into more trouble than if you had just let it go. She went to the protest anyway and marched down the street chanting slogans like, “Hey hey, ho ho, date rape has got to go!”
But I’m digressing now and probably needlessly offending anyone who was ever been involved with the Calvin Feminists. The point is that I rejoined a lot of these groups, and found the makeup of them a lot different than I remembered.
The Social Justice Committee (it had been known as The Progressives during my Freshman and Sophomore year) now seemed to be dominated by underclassmen, showing that not everyone had to wait until they were a senior before they felt confident speaking out. One of the projects they had undertaken was to attend the annual protests against the School of the Americas. The first trip had been the previous year, so many of the sophomores were already veterans by the time I joined my senior year.
The faculty mentor, a Calvin professor, gave us this word of advice before we set out. “Last year there was a lot of bad things said about the Calvin group to the SOA protest,” he said. “People said some of them were only going on the trip for fun, or to be with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever. If you go on this trip, you need to take it very seriously. There are hundreds of people dead because of this school in Georgia. It’s no joke.”
And so while we were on the trip, I think we all tried to keep a somber and reverent attitude. But in spite of the tragedy we were confronting, our natural inclination was to be up beat. In fact, I think anytime you get a group of young people together, the atmosphere automatically becomes joyful. There were a few people on the trip who could really make me laugh hard, and we did a lot of laughing on the van ride down, and for the whole weekend in general.
For me the highlight of the whole trip was seeing Pete Seeger, who performed at the protest. I saw him play twice, once at the large rally in the afternoon, and again in a smaller auditorium in a workshop on non-violence. It was an amazing thing to be in the same room as such a legend.
His singing voice was pretty much gone, and he couldn’t sing without being accompanied by his grandson. But when he spoke in between songs, his voice sounded as clear as a bell, and it sounded exactly the same as the old records I had listened to growing up. (When I was a child I had a copy of his record “Pete Seeger’s songs about Animals”, which I must have listened to a hundred times. Of course I had no idea who he was at the time, and it wasn’t until I was 19 and bought one of his CDs that I realized the voice on the CD was the same one I had listened to on the record years ago.)
As in previous years, Sunday was the day when people would walk on to the base. Although the protest was entirely peaceful, it was illegal to protest on the actual base itself, and doing so could mean arrest. The previous year thousands of people had crossed the base to protest, and the police couldn’t arrest them all, so they had simply been loaded onto buses and driven away. We were pretty sure the same thing was going to happen, although there were no guarantees.
Opinion was somewhat split among the Calvin group. Some people felt that it was not okay to break the law even if it was in a non-violent way, and so opted not to walk onto the base. Others had class they had to return for on Monday, and so could not afford to take the risk of being arrested or detained by the police. About half of us chose to cross the line and walk onto the base.
We walked in an orderly line with thousands of other people, and proceeded down the road until the police stopped the march. At which point people just sat down on the road, and waited for the police to remove them. Following classic civil disobedience strategy, we were not resisting the police, but we were not cooperating with them either. We would refuse to remove ourselves from the base until they physically removed us.
Or at least that was the plan. But as we sat on the ground, the police continued to walk up and down the road reminding people, “The buses are here. Anytime you want to load yourself on the bus, just go ahead and climb on.”
It was a hot day. We left our spot on the road to sit under the shade of a tree on the grass. We were talking there for a while, until a nun came up to us and said, “We’re trying to get people to stay on the road. We want to keep the atmosphere here somber in order to remember the people who were killed, and we don’t want it turning into a festive, picnic like atmosphere like it did last year. So do you think you could go back to the road?”
I didn’t see how being excessively somber would help the people who were already dead, but how could we argue with a nun? So we returned to the road. But a while later I noticed some of my friends had returned to the grass, and I joined them.
There were literally thousands of people, and we were quite a ways back in the crowd. We knew that if we waitedl for the police to remove everyone ahead of us, we would be there all day. And so eventually someone proposed the idea of voluntarily loading ourselves up on the bus.
On one level voluntary putting ourselves on the bus and removing ourselves seemed to defeat the whole idea of civil disobedience. And yet what difference did it make if the police had to escort us to the bus, or if we came to the buses ourselves? Did it make a real difference if we waited until the police came to our line, or could we just skip ahead of some of the people in front of us?
The point was debated for a little bit. Someone mentioned the classes they had on Monday morning, which, if it was all the same anyway, he would just assume not miss. Someone else said she had traveled all this way with the intent of protesting, and thought voluntarily loading herself on the bus defeated the whole purpose.
I kept silent the whole time. My conscious was with the girl who wanted to be true to the spirit of civil disobedience to the end, but we had already been sitting on the ground for several hours now, and part of me was hoping that the other side would win. When we finally took a vote on it, I abstained, but was secretly relieved when the other side won.
Very similar discussions were going on in a lot of the groups around us. One group of students sitting next to us had been discussing the question in passionate tones for a long time. I didn’t catch everything that they said, but I saw them vote, and then revote, and then argue some more, and then finally agree to voluntarily load themselves up on the bus. They continued singing protest songs as they stood up and left their spot to walk on the bus, singing: “We shall not be moved.” The irony of this seemed to be lost on all of them but one at the back of the line who pleaded, “Guys, guys, can we please sing something else. Guys I really don’t think this song is appropriate right now.” She struggled to make herself heard above their singing, and eventually left her place at the back of the line to run up to the front where she persuaded the song leader to adopt a different tune.
Our group loaded ourselves up on the bus with not quite as much drama. The buses were regularly getting filled up and then driven out of the base. We were dropped off just outside of the base, and then regrouped and left for home later that afternoon.
One of the group later wrote up this article for Chimes. He e-mailed us all for thoughts or quotes, and I e-mailed him back some stuff that ended up getting put in the article.
The following year I was unable to attend the protest because I was student teaching, and couldn’t take an absence. (Yet another example of making politics subservient to student teaching). Instead, I wrote up this Chimes article the week before the protest as my contribution.
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