Once again this blog gets me in trouble. This time with a slightly larger audience.
If you're reading this, it means you had to log in or create some sort of Google account. (Unless for some reason I've screwed up and this blog is still public. In which case someone tell me now!)
I got home from school the other day and checked my e-mail, and there were a surprising amount of comments on the last post. Ah, nice to know people care, I thought. Then I thought, "Wait a minute, do I even know half these people? Who knew my blog was so popular?"
And then I had yet another thought, and went over to my stat-counter account, to look at who has been reading my blog lately. And, sure enough, I'd been picked up by "the NET". Within 30 hours of posting, my previous blog post was making its way around the various bulletin boards.
There are several bulletin boards that specialize for expatriates in Japan, and at last count my previous post was the topic of 3 different bulletin board discussions, one of which was under the heading: "Check out this blog of a stereo-typical Nova loser." The following discussions on these BBs revolved around how much of a loser I was.
Gee, way to kick a guy when he's down, huh?
After 5 years of blogging in obscurity, I guess I'm finally getting my 15 minutes of internet fame. Somehow this was not quite the way I imagined it would happen.
It certainly felt a bit surreal to have all these people I didn't know taking such an active interest in my life, and even actively debating it with eachother.
So there I was, thinking to myself, "Well, it's a good thing I've got tough skin", and "That's what you get for posting stuff on the internet", when it suddenly hit me that all of this internet attention was completely unfair to Shoko.
So I decided the least I could do was take this blog underground temporarily while I re-evaluated my editorial process.
Not that it did me much good. Within minutes of my taking my blog down, links appeared on the BB sites to the Google cached version of my post. Ah, caught by the Google cache. It's an all to common story among bloggers these days.
So, for the moment, it looks like I'm stuck with my post floating around the internet. (Unless any of you tech people know a way out of this mess.)
The thing is I should have known better. I mean I had read all the blogging horror stories, and I even personally knew a couple people who had gotten burned by their blogs. Not to mention several of you have cautioned me on occasion that I was occasionally crossing the line with this blog. I guess if you want to say "I told you so", now's your opportunity.
Clearly I have a lot of personal information on this blog, not just about me but about other people. And although I was not unaware of privacy issues related with blogging, I never thought this blog would get a lot of attention. (Yeah, that's what they all say after they get burned, isn't it?) So I'm going to stay underground for a bit while I think through some of these blogging related issues. Hopefully this won't completely ruin what has been a good outlet for me over the past few years, and helped to keep me sane during my time in Japan
For the time being , I'm going to try and think about some good blogging rules with the idea of bringing this blog public again
Specifically: I'm going to try and keep personal updates to a minimum, and try keep other people's information out of it.
I'll concentrate instead on my various blogging projects: Book reviews, movie reviews , Video reviews, and (if I ever get another free day) "Better Know a City" travelogues. Hopefully all those will keep me out of trouble.
Several of you have told me you're not very interested in my various reviews, and I can completely understand that because quite frankly I'm not sure I would be interested in someone else's reading list either. But it does keep me out of trouble and although my voyeristic posts make for much more interesting reading, they obviously carry certain dangers with them as well. Now that I'm 30, maybe it's finally time to take a step towards more adult blogging.
As for the Retrospections...
I hate to stop doing those, because I really enjoy the reminiscing. And I've already got a bunch of those pre-written, which I was hoping was going to help me get through dry blogging spells as I concentrate on schoolwork.
But even after forgoing full names, I'm worried all that information about other people is asking for trouble. I've been trying to justify them on the basis that they're old enough to be beyond carrying, but you never know what someone else will care about, do you? Especially if I ever find a post of mine making the rounds on the internet Bulletin Boards again...
I don't know, what do you guys think?
Link of the Day
Jessica Yellin: Reporters Were “Under Enormous Pressure” From Corporate Executives to Support War
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Break-Up
Shoko and I broke up last week. It was probably a long time coming, but I had managed to fool myself by ignoring all the warning signs.
The cracks first began to appear about 2 years ago. After we made an informal promise to get married to each other, the plan was that I would go back to America ahead of Shoko so I could start looking for work and get a job lined up before she arrived. Shoko was very worried about the money, so she wanted to stay at her current job until July of the next summer. This would give her one year to save up as much money as she could before moving to America. It was also important for her to stay until the summer bonus in July, because Japanese companies give out a significant percentage (close to half) of the company salary in the form of bonuses.
I was not wild about the time apart. Since I was returning to America in May, this meant over a year apart until next July. I was worried about the strain that would put on the relationship, and I was worried about just being plain lonely in the interim. But Shoko was firmly decided on this point, and I did understand her concerns about the money.
(We talked about the idea of trying to visit each other during this time, but international flights would somewhat defeat the purpose of saving money. So we were looking at over a year with only e-mails and a weekly phone call. (Shoko, more so than me, was concerned about running up a phone bill, so we tried to limit our time on the phone as well)).
A few months after I was back in America, Shoko had decided to push the date back even farther. "I've been talking to my co-workers," she said on the telephone. "And they all agreed it would be so stupid to quit in July. Then I wouldn't get the December bonus. It would be such a waste to quit just 6 months short of that bonus."
"But that's close to 2 years apart," I said. "I'm not sure we could survive that. It's a lot of strain on any relationship. Plus if you decide to wait for the December bonus, then there's no cut off point. By the time you got to December, then you'd only be 6 months away from the July bonus again."
But Shoko refused to be budged on this point. She was worried about the money, so she would wait until the December 2008 bonus.
....So, I decided to go back to Japan. Well, why not? What was one more year? The decision to leave after 5 years instead of 6 years was fairly arbitrary in the first place.
And it's not like I was doing anything important back home at the time. I was overjoyed about being back in America, (and spending time with friends, eating pizza, browsing English bookstores,etc), but I still had no clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life than I did when I left for Japan 5 years earlier at the age of 23.
I had hoped that once I got back to America and started settling into life, things would sort themselves out. And even now I like to think that if I had stayed in America and given it a serious effort, eventually it would have worked out. But at the time I was still struggling, and so it seemed an easy decision to go back to Japan. I sent out a couple of applications and video introductions and went for an interview with Nova in Chicago. And decided in the end to go with NOVA. (There were really only a couple choices in Shoko's area). Having lived in Japan, I had heard all NOVA the horror stories of course, but a job was a job, and I figured it would do well enough for a year or so while I decided what I wanted to do with my life.
In the meantime I got a job working at Meijers (just as something to keep me busy). Once the fall started, I got a job teaching English to migrant workers, and dropped Meijers down to part time. When the teaching job finished after a couple of months, I remained part time at Meijers. They had already hired more staff, so it wasn't easy to return to full time. And to tell you the truth, I didn't mind so much. That job bored the hell out of me anyway, and I was perfectly happy waiting out my last couple months on cruise control until NOVA would be able to ship me back to Japan in January.
Shoko was not so happy about it. She began to get increasingly uneasy and say things like, "I really hoped your laziness would improve once you got a change of scenery. But now you're just living at your parent's house and working part time at the supermarket. This is almost as bad as when you were staying at my apartment and watching videos all day. How are you going to support me in America when you can't even find a real job?"
I got angry about this, and it must be admitted that part of the reason I got upset was that it was partially accurate. I was overly complacent to be under employed. If I had really gotten off my ass, maybe I could have found another job in the 2 and a half months I had left in the U.S.
....One the other hand, she knew very well the reason I didn't have a real job is because I had turned down 2 teaching jobs offers in order to return to Japan and be with her. And she knew it because I had consulted about this with her on the phone ahead of time, and we both agreed that the best thing for the relationship would be for me to return to Japan for the time being. So the accusation that I couldn't find a job in America was totally baseless. I tried to remind her of this several times, but it never seemed to sink in. Every time she got worked up she would forget about it. I would point it out one week, but the next week I would still be back to "the boy who couldn't find a real job in his home country."
As for the accusation of watching videos all day in her apartment: well, again, there is an element of truth here. There were four times when I was staying at Shoko's apartment for extended periods of time. (August 2004 when I was between jobs, Spring Break 2005, August 2005-summer break, and April 2006, after finishing my job in Gifu. ) During this time it must be admitted that I was somewhat at loose ends for how to occupy myself. For the record I didn't watch videos the whole time. (You can search my blog archives for detailed descriptions of my various other activities). But I did - watch - a lot of videos, about one a day, sometimes more.
In my defense:
*There wasn't a lot else to do in Hita. It was a rural town, there was nothing there and nothing to do, I knew absolutely no one there, and it was too hot to go hiking around in the blazing Kyushu summer heat.
*This was scheduled time off of work because of the school year. I didn't ask for this much time off, it was just given to me. Whether I used this time to relax and watch videos, or whether I was wrestling polar bears in the Arctic, my pay and financial stability would be the same. (In fact arguably the staying put and doing nothing vacation was a lot better for my finances).
* I had gotten rid of my TV in my own apartment long ago. So this was literally the only time during the year when I even had the option of being able to watch videos.
*...and lastly, being stuck in Shoko's apartment in a hick town in the middle of nowhere wasn't a barrel of monkey's for me either. The reason I did it repeatedly is because I thought it was important for the relationship. Those 4 times were the only periods in which we spent any significant amount of time together. Even when we both lived in Oita prefecture, her apartment in Hita was an hour and a half drive from my place. Plus even if one of us made the drive, I worked during the week days and she worked weekends. Once I went up to Gifu, we managed to see each other no more than once every two months. If we were lucky. Sometimes it was as long as half a year between meetings. I figured the relationship would never have survived without me spending the summers at her place.
So, I sacrificed my paid holidays to hang out with Shoko in the middle of nowhere. I did my best to occupy myself during the day without complaining, and I was happy just to have the evenings with her and her days off.
.... As I talked to Shoko on the phone now, I began to realize that far from appreciating this gesture, she had actually resented it. I knew that because she said, "I really resented the way you got to stay home and watch videos all day while I had to go to work."
If I had only known my sacrifice was not only going completely unappreciated, but it was making the relationship worse. Think of all the other things I could have done with that time off! I mean, the mind boggles at the possibilities. I think of what my co-workers did: the scuba diving, the trips to Thailand, the backpacking in Europe! And here I find out, long after that vacation is gone and used up, that she resented it! And she waits till now to tell me this!
But what can you do? It's not like you can appeal to an outside authority on the matter: "Your Honour, I move that since I was under the impression it was what she wanted, and since the statute of limitations has clearly expired, the court has no choice but to count the time spent as a credit to the relationship, and not a detriment."
No, when you're in a relationship, and all you want is the other person's approval, all you can do is apologize. I made a brief attempt to make her see my point of view, and then I had to apologize to her for sacrificing my vacation time at her apartment.
Nor was this the last word on the subject. Shoko had been reading several books warning about the dangers of international marriages. According to these books, many Japanese woman marry American English teachers in Japan, and then return with them to America only to discover that the whole reason they had been in Japan in the first place was because they can't find good jobs in their own countries. I had to spend a lot of time reassuring her on these points, even though I was already planning on coming to Japan.
All of this resurfaced the first night I came back to in Japan. Shortly after we moved me into our new apartment, she started crying. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm not sure if I love you anymore," she answered.
Oh, great! You couldn't have mentioned this before I turned down to teaching offers, quit my job (such as it was) said good-bye to all my friends and family, bought a plane ticket, and flew half way around the world! And now I'm supposed to try and comfort you on this point?
But what can you do? So I rubbed her back and gave her the usual "there, there's" and only afterward suggested to her she was being unfair to me: that she should have mentioned this before I came to Japan, or else kept her mouth shut about it for a few more weeks until she had made up her mind one way or the other.
Over the next few days, I turned on the Swagman charm and within days she was feeling a lot better about the whole thing, and after a few weeks we were even joking about it. "Remember that time I came all the way back to Japan to be with you, and I had barely even gotten off the plane when you told me you didn't think you loved me anymore? Ah, fun times!"
When I first came back to Japan, the original plan was we would still return to the States, just delay it by a year. Shoko exacted one promise from me: that I wouldn't ask her to quit her job unless I had some stable income already lined up in the US. She had a job with a large salary (a lot more than I made teaching English) and in Japan once you leave the workplace, it is very difficult to return, and almost impossible to return at your previous salary. So she needed proof of stability before she made that jump on faith.
And it was an entirely reasonable request. I couldn't reasonably ask her to quit her job unless I knew what I was going to do in America. It was now time to face the age old problem that has haunted me all my adult life: what do I want to do?
My degree was in teaching, but I had never been very enthusiastic about that from the start and now I was positive I didn't want to do it. After teaching English for so long in Japan, I was sick of kids, sick of classroom control, sick of yelling. And this was Japan! God knows what would await me at some inner city school in the US. Plus every one I knew in education was complaining about government bureaucracy, No Child left Behind, and endless paperwork.
But most of all, the idea of being a teacher was something from my younger days, when I had imagined my shyness and social awkwardness would shed off as I became an adult, and I would become an energetic, extroverted, decisive adult figure who could handle rowdy kids, angry parents,and the other stresses of teaching. Now well into my adult hood, I'm just as shy and socially awkward as ever, and perhaps teaching isn't the best route for me.
I had no interest in the world of business. Although at this point I would certainly have done it eagerly enough for a decent paycheck. But I knew plenty of history majors back home who were struggling to get jobs, and applying instead for telemarketing jobs. (For that matter I knew business majors who couldn't get jobs in business, and joined the army instead).
I had long fantasized about social activist work, but when I was back in the activist scene in Grand Rapids last year I realized most of these people were working for almost no money at all. It was not the kind of job that would promise Shoko the life she wanted. (And that's even if I did get hired. Despite my enthusiasm for various causes, I have little practical skills to offer these organizations).
Then there was the old dream of pursuing a graduate degree in history. Which most of the time I recognized for what it was: a dream. It was 4 years of hard work and financial instability, at the end of which was no guarantee of a job. I had heard the horror stories from all the graduate school drop outs who teach English in Asia. I had even mentioned it to Calvin career services when I made an appointment with them last summer, and they tried to talk me out of it. Still, history was the only thing I was interested in, and whenever pressed about career goals, I would usually answer I had graduate school in the back of my mind.
On the whole, it looked less and less likely I would be able to get away from Japan. But maybe Japan wasn't that bad. My job had its ups and downs, but on the whole it was a nice combination of all the pleasures of teaching (human interaction, helping people) with few of the downsides (classroom control, paperwork, lesson preparation).
Every once and a while I would get homesick, or get a dangerous delusion of self-importance that I was destined for greater things than teaching English in a small rural town in Japan. But more and more I was beginning to resign myself to life in Japan. If I could be with the person I loved, how bad could it be?
The first bump in this road happened when Shoko began telling me she would love to quit her job and become a housewife, if only my salary could support it. And my current salary (roughly $25,000 a year) couldn't support a family, as Shoko repeatedly pointed out to me. She also contrasted my salary with the other eligible Japanese business men she knew, and how much more money she would have if she was marrying one of them.
This was a bit of a surprise, because up until now Shoko had always maintained she wanted to have a life outside of the house and it was important to her to continue working in some form or another where ever our lives might lead us. So, in all my economic calculations until now, I had only worried about supporting her in the event we moved to America. The idea that I should support her in Japan really complicated things. Especially since the job options for a foreigner in the Japanese countryside are rather limited.
There was also another misunderstanding that would grow more and more serious. Shoko saw my chances for success in grad school and eventually a University professorship. I saw grad school as a pipe dream I would talk about whenever I felt tired of the job I was doing now. This turned out to be a serious communication error.
I had mistakenly thought that the desire to return to America and go into grad school was mine entirely, and that Shoko would be just as happy (probably more happy) to stay in Japan. I never realized that she viewed my going to grad school as her ticket out of the work force.
Thus throughout that year, Shoko would ask me, "Are you researching grad schools like we talked about?"
And I would answer something like, "Yeah, yeah." By which I meant I was occasionally thinking about it in a dreamy eyed way over a cup of coffee during my noon lunch. Sometimes it seemed tempting. Usually all the difficulties associated with it convinced me I'd be just as happy staying where I was. Again, I was thinking this was entirely my decision to make, and Shoko would just sigh with relief when I told her I had decided against grad school after all.
Then, one day in the fall, she asked me what schools I was thinking about attending next year. "Next year?" I said. "Oh no no no, next year is way too soon. Now is the time of year where I would have to be wrapping up applications, and I haven't even started. And I would need to get letters of recommendation, study for the GRE test, take the GRE test, talk to professors, etc. I couldn't possibly apply for next year already."
This lead to fireworks like you wouldn't believe. I was never fully forgiven for this. "You told me all these months that you were researching this," Shoko yelled. "And I believed you. What you were really doing was just thinking about it! Anyone could think about it! A smart person researches it while they think about it! I had everything all planned out. We were going to get married this year. Then you were going to start grad school in the fall! I was going to pregnant right before you started studying, so that by the time the baby came around you would already have one year done, and then I could get a year maternity leave and come to America with you. Then I would go back to Japan the third year and get pregnant again....
But all this is ruined now because you lied to me when you said you were researching this. I can't trust you at all."
This was, by the way, not a fight that lasted just one night. This went on for weeks during which I had to beg forgiveness nightly. She threatened to leave me then, unless I would promise to somehow manage to apply for grad school this year. So I promised. I ordered a whole bunch of books off of amazon about GREs and grad school and started working my way through them.
And, if things aren't bad enough, Nova goes bankrupt in October, and for the next 3 months I am officially the unemployed boyfriend, sponging off of his girlfriend's salary.
I already detailed the drama that went on in those months in a seperate post over here:
How none of us were sure if we would get our jobs back or not.
How Shoko wanted me to start up my own company, but I was resistant to doing it.
How we were going to work with another couple to set up our own company, but then Shoko had a falling out with them and wanted me to go solo.
And how finally, when she gave me the option of starting my own company, going to grad school, or getting kicked out of the apartment, I chose to go to grad school.
But, as I also wrote before, I changed the plan. This time I was thinking about going into Japanese history. It wasn't my first love, but it would allow me to build on the past 6 years of living in Japan, it would allow me to study in Japan (taking the financial burdern off of supporting Shoko) and if all else fails, hopefully the Japanese language skills might lead to other job options if I failed as an academic.
This was assuming of course I had Japanse language skills. The programs I looked into were English based, but I tried to convince Shoko it would be pure folly to attempt to study Japanese history at the graduate level without some fluency in the Japanese language. "But it says right on the website it's an English program," Shoko said.
"Trust me," I said, "I can't expect to be competitive in the field of Japanese history without being first competent in the language."
Shoko was very reluctant to agree to this because it meant delaying grad school by yet another year. "Remember we're not so young anymore," she said. "You'll be 30 this spring. You can't delay any longer."
She also refused to believe that Japanese language proficiency would in itself be beneficial. "I hope you're not thinking if you learn Japanese you can get a lot of jobs," she said. "Because you can't. Japanese fluency by itself will at best just get you some low paid entrance position in a Japanese company." (Well, on this point she might well be right. I can't begin to count the amount of people who have much better Japanese than I do and are little better off financially).
Eventually Shoko agreed that I could take the Japanese language course. With the promise that I would continue working while I did it.
Regular readers of this blog of course know that I was eventually successfully in re-arranging my schedule at Nova, and the Japanese language course began about 2 months ago. I have since been exhausted just about everyday.
You would think all this hard work on my part would have alleviated our problems somewhat. But instead things only began to intensify. Shoko began to become more and more uneasy about my prospects at grad school. She repeated to me all the things I had said the previous fall about why I was ambivalent about going, and the horror stories about trying to find secure work as an academic. I shared these concerns, but at this point I had decided this was the path I was committed on, so I gave half hearted rebuttals. It was extremely discouraging to have committed to this course, only to have someone at your side telling you constantly why you couldn't do it. Shoko, for her part, was being continually set upon by her friends and her mother, who were telling her to break up with me because I couldn't possibly have a reliable future.
"But you don't know anything about Japanese history," Shoko repeatedly reminded me. "How do you expect to get into grad school?"
I countered that I was trying to study it in my free time now. But this was a weak argument, because I had no free time.
The irony was I would have loved to sit down with a bunch of textbooks and some snacks and really read up on Japanese history. But I had absolutely no time to do this. I didn't really even have time to keep up with my daily homework. Shoko was also reminding me that I should be researching grad school departments and studying for the GRE test at the same time.
I was searching for various ways to cut my work load down. My first proposal to quit my job was rejected outright and angrily by Shoko. (I wasn't thinking I'd quit working all together, but simply trying to make a go of it teaching private lessons. Shoko was strongly against this.)
Next I asked Nova if they could at least scale down my hours. They said since they were sponsering my visa, I would need to work full time. However If I got my visa changed to a student visa it might be possible.
But In order to get a student visa I would have needed to pay $1000 in entrance fees to the school. (This had been initially waved for me because I was on a working visa). The school suggested that if I was planning on getting married this year anyway, I get a spousal visa instead.
Shoko was strongly against cutting down my hours by even one lesson. Nor did she want me to quit the private lessons I was currently doing. (I have been teaching the daughter of one of her co-workers, and I had picked up a few more private lessons during the time Nova was bankrupt). I tried to tell Shoko I couldn't keep this up and I would have to quit one or the other.
Shoko, on the other hand, was having more and more doubts about the relationship, and would at times cry, at times angrily burst out at me about how little progress I had made researching grad schools, and at times just be stonily silent.
On top of all this, the car broke down and we had to go shopping for a new car. By which I mean primarily Shoko had to go shopping for a new car, because I was busy from 6 Am to 9 PM pretty much 7 days a week.
I began to feel like something had to give. Either I had to cut down on my hours at work, or I had to give up my private lessons, or I had to move closer to Beppu and cut out this 2 hour and 40 minute commute that I was making 5 days a week.
One Friday I got home after an exhausting day of driving back and forth to Beppu, going to school from 9 to 3, and teaching 5 classes in the evening. I wanted to talk to Shoko then, but she was already asleep when I got back.
So I waited for the next day. It was Saturday, I taught 9 lessons at work, and then had to go teach Shoko's co-worker's daughter. I came back again exhausted. Shoko was again asleep, but I woke her up to ask how the search for the car had been. Then I said maybe it would be better if I just got an apartment closer in Beppu so I didn't have to drive a car at all, and maybe the money I would save on car, gas, and insurance would even itself out. Shoko began getting upset again. So finally I said, "Look, if you want to break up with me, it's okay. I'm tired."
She agreed with amazing rapidity. And immediately begin talking about how soon I would move out of the apartment.
I regretted the words as soon as they had been said, but they were said. I guess I'll always wonder what would have happened if I hadn't opened my mouth.
I tried to put the break on things a little bit. "Look, there's no need to move out tomorrow," I said. "Why don't we think about things for a week? We can always break up later." But she responded firmly that she was decided.
While I figured out where I would live, she decided to move back to her mother's house and leave the apartment temporarily to me. But it took her a week before she decided she had enough energy to put up with the hassle of moving. It was a long painful week in which we were living in the same apartment, but she avoided talking to me as much as possible, and I felt like my guts were slowly being ripped out of my stomach. I couldn't concentrate on school, I couldn't concentrate at work, all I could think about was, "she's leaving me, because I don't make enough money."
It was a painful situation to begin with, but the sense of powerlessness made it worse. I tried everything I could think of. I promised to never complain about my work load again. I promised to cut down on my sleep even more, and use the extra time to research my future for an hour every night before going to bed. I made up a list of 15 promises, promising ever single thing I could think of. At every point Shoko just responded, "I told you my mind is made up. The only reason I haven't moved out already is because I haven't had time."
I tried pleading with her, but Shoko said, "Look, if you lose your confidence over this and become pathetic, you're only going to get more unattractive."
I tried to do everything for her I could think of, but she said, "stop treating me like a princess. The problem was never how you treated me. The problem is about your future."
"Look, graduate school isn't that important," I said. "I'll just stay and work at Nova. Lot's of Nova teachers get married to Japanese women and raise a family here in Japan and are perfectly happy doing it."
"On that salary, their wives must have to work also," Shoko responded.
The more I tried to talk to her about what was going on, the angrier she got whenever the subject was brought up, and told me she was sick of talking about the same things over and over again.
"Please try and be a little bit nicer to me," I said at one point. "I came all away around the world and re-arranged my whole life to be with you."
"I know," she said, "and that was so stupid. A man should never re-arrange his life for a girlfriend."
...Well, at present I guess I'm in no state to disagree with this. But I said to her that if she felt so strongly about this, the time to have mentioned it was BEFORE I had come over.
"A Japanese man would never have left everything for a girlfriend," Shoko continued. "The man's purpose is to find a good job and beome financially stable. Then the girlfriend will come to him."
Obviously this is a partially a culture clash, but part of this is universal as well. I seem to have severely underestimated how big a part financial stability plays in being able to form long term relationships. How naive I've been all these years. (Feminist jargon may make a man sound enlightened at a cocktail party, but woe be to the man stupid enough to actually take it seriously).
I wish to hell the break up had been over any other reason besides money, and my inability to promise her financial security. It makes me feel like a failure at life.
Although she did add at one point, "It's not your fault. Partly I'm just tired of dating a foreigner. You can't do anything by yourself in this country. When you get registered for health insurance, or when you buy a car, or when you do anything, I always have to come along to help you understand. In most relationships the man is supposed to do things for the woman, not the other way around."
This didn't make me feel any better actually. In fact it made me feel worse because it was another factor outside of my control.
I said I had asked for her help because I thought it would be easier to have a native Japanese person by my side, but I could probably have struggled through alone. I promised in the future I would never ask her help for anything, but, like all my other promises, it didn't do me any good.
I'm not exactly sure where things stand right now to be honest. Shoko told me that part of her still loves me, and she wants some time apart to think about things. As part of this arrangement, I had to promise to continue at my present job, continue going to school, and continue all my private lessons as pre-conditions for her even considering getting back together with me. So I promised to continue.
However during this time she also said we were officially broken up, and free to date other people while we thought about the future. (Which, may I just say, is a lot nicer deal for her than it is for me. Under the schedule I've agreed to continue, she knows damn well I wouldn't have time to date anyone else even if I wanted to.) I told her I didn't think I could handle her dating other people, but she said, "Think of us as already being broke up and finished. With just the possibility of getting back together. If I wasn't free to date other people, that would defeat the whole purpose of being broke up."
She then added, "If I look at things from a coldly rational standpoint though, I can't see any reason why I should get back together with you."
The frustrating thing is she's probably right.
Link of the Day
On the off chance you haven't seen these already:
John McCain vs. John McCain and John McCain's Youtube problem
The cracks first began to appear about 2 years ago. After we made an informal promise to get married to each other, the plan was that I would go back to America ahead of Shoko so I could start looking for work and get a job lined up before she arrived. Shoko was very worried about the money, so she wanted to stay at her current job until July of the next summer. This would give her one year to save up as much money as she could before moving to America. It was also important for her to stay until the summer bonus in July, because Japanese companies give out a significant percentage (close to half) of the company salary in the form of bonuses.
I was not wild about the time apart. Since I was returning to America in May, this meant over a year apart until next July. I was worried about the strain that would put on the relationship, and I was worried about just being plain lonely in the interim. But Shoko was firmly decided on this point, and I did understand her concerns about the money.
(We talked about the idea of trying to visit each other during this time, but international flights would somewhat defeat the purpose of saving money. So we were looking at over a year with only e-mails and a weekly phone call. (Shoko, more so than me, was concerned about running up a phone bill, so we tried to limit our time on the phone as well)).
A few months after I was back in America, Shoko had decided to push the date back even farther. "I've been talking to my co-workers," she said on the telephone. "And they all agreed it would be so stupid to quit in July. Then I wouldn't get the December bonus. It would be such a waste to quit just 6 months short of that bonus."
"But that's close to 2 years apart," I said. "I'm not sure we could survive that. It's a lot of strain on any relationship. Plus if you decide to wait for the December bonus, then there's no cut off point. By the time you got to December, then you'd only be 6 months away from the July bonus again."
But Shoko refused to be budged on this point. She was worried about the money, so she would wait until the December 2008 bonus.
....So, I decided to go back to Japan. Well, why not? What was one more year? The decision to leave after 5 years instead of 6 years was fairly arbitrary in the first place.
And it's not like I was doing anything important back home at the time. I was overjoyed about being back in America, (and spending time with friends, eating pizza, browsing English bookstores,etc), but I still had no clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life than I did when I left for Japan 5 years earlier at the age of 23.
I had hoped that once I got back to America and started settling into life, things would sort themselves out. And even now I like to think that if I had stayed in America and given it a serious effort, eventually it would have worked out. But at the time I was still struggling, and so it seemed an easy decision to go back to Japan. I sent out a couple of applications and video introductions and went for an interview with Nova in Chicago. And decided in the end to go with NOVA. (There were really only a couple choices in Shoko's area). Having lived in Japan, I had heard all NOVA the horror stories of course, but a job was a job, and I figured it would do well enough for a year or so while I decided what I wanted to do with my life.
In the meantime I got a job working at Meijers (just as something to keep me busy). Once the fall started, I got a job teaching English to migrant workers, and dropped Meijers down to part time. When the teaching job finished after a couple of months, I remained part time at Meijers. They had already hired more staff, so it wasn't easy to return to full time. And to tell you the truth, I didn't mind so much. That job bored the hell out of me anyway, and I was perfectly happy waiting out my last couple months on cruise control until NOVA would be able to ship me back to Japan in January.
Shoko was not so happy about it. She began to get increasingly uneasy and say things like, "I really hoped your laziness would improve once you got a change of scenery. But now you're just living at your parent's house and working part time at the supermarket. This is almost as bad as when you were staying at my apartment and watching videos all day. How are you going to support me in America when you can't even find a real job?"
I got angry about this, and it must be admitted that part of the reason I got upset was that it was partially accurate. I was overly complacent to be under employed. If I had really gotten off my ass, maybe I could have found another job in the 2 and a half months I had left in the U.S.
....One the other hand, she knew very well the reason I didn't have a real job is because I had turned down 2 teaching jobs offers in order to return to Japan and be with her. And she knew it because I had consulted about this with her on the phone ahead of time, and we both agreed that the best thing for the relationship would be for me to return to Japan for the time being. So the accusation that I couldn't find a job in America was totally baseless. I tried to remind her of this several times, but it never seemed to sink in. Every time she got worked up she would forget about it. I would point it out one week, but the next week I would still be back to "the boy who couldn't find a real job in his home country."
As for the accusation of watching videos all day in her apartment: well, again, there is an element of truth here. There were four times when I was staying at Shoko's apartment for extended periods of time. (August 2004 when I was between jobs, Spring Break 2005, August 2005-summer break, and April 2006, after finishing my job in Gifu. ) During this time it must be admitted that I was somewhat at loose ends for how to occupy myself. For the record I didn't watch videos the whole time. (You can search my blog archives for detailed descriptions of my various other activities). But I did - watch - a lot of videos, about one a day, sometimes more.
In my defense:
*There wasn't a lot else to do in Hita. It was a rural town, there was nothing there and nothing to do, I knew absolutely no one there, and it was too hot to go hiking around in the blazing Kyushu summer heat.
*This was scheduled time off of work because of the school year. I didn't ask for this much time off, it was just given to me. Whether I used this time to relax and watch videos, or whether I was wrestling polar bears in the Arctic, my pay and financial stability would be the same. (In fact arguably the staying put and doing nothing vacation was a lot better for my finances).
* I had gotten rid of my TV in my own apartment long ago. So this was literally the only time during the year when I even had the option of being able to watch videos.
*...and lastly, being stuck in Shoko's apartment in a hick town in the middle of nowhere wasn't a barrel of monkey's for me either. The reason I did it repeatedly is because I thought it was important for the relationship. Those 4 times were the only periods in which we spent any significant amount of time together. Even when we both lived in Oita prefecture, her apartment in Hita was an hour and a half drive from my place. Plus even if one of us made the drive, I worked during the week days and she worked weekends. Once I went up to Gifu, we managed to see each other no more than once every two months. If we were lucky. Sometimes it was as long as half a year between meetings. I figured the relationship would never have survived without me spending the summers at her place.
So, I sacrificed my paid holidays to hang out with Shoko in the middle of nowhere. I did my best to occupy myself during the day without complaining, and I was happy just to have the evenings with her and her days off.
.... As I talked to Shoko on the phone now, I began to realize that far from appreciating this gesture, she had actually resented it. I knew that because she said, "I really resented the way you got to stay home and watch videos all day while I had to go to work."
If I had only known my sacrifice was not only going completely unappreciated, but it was making the relationship worse. Think of all the other things I could have done with that time off! I mean, the mind boggles at the possibilities. I think of what my co-workers did: the scuba diving, the trips to Thailand, the backpacking in Europe! And here I find out, long after that vacation is gone and used up, that she resented it! And she waits till now to tell me this!
But what can you do? It's not like you can appeal to an outside authority on the matter: "Your Honour, I move that since I was under the impression it was what she wanted, and since the statute of limitations has clearly expired, the court has no choice but to count the time spent as a credit to the relationship, and not a detriment."
No, when you're in a relationship, and all you want is the other person's approval, all you can do is apologize. I made a brief attempt to make her see my point of view, and then I had to apologize to her for sacrificing my vacation time at her apartment.
Nor was this the last word on the subject. Shoko had been reading several books warning about the dangers of international marriages. According to these books, many Japanese woman marry American English teachers in Japan, and then return with them to America only to discover that the whole reason they had been in Japan in the first place was because they can't find good jobs in their own countries. I had to spend a lot of time reassuring her on these points, even though I was already planning on coming to Japan.
All of this resurfaced the first night I came back to in Japan. Shortly after we moved me into our new apartment, she started crying. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm not sure if I love you anymore," she answered.
Oh, great! You couldn't have mentioned this before I turned down to teaching offers, quit my job (such as it was) said good-bye to all my friends and family, bought a plane ticket, and flew half way around the world! And now I'm supposed to try and comfort you on this point?
But what can you do? So I rubbed her back and gave her the usual "there, there's" and only afterward suggested to her she was being unfair to me: that she should have mentioned this before I came to Japan, or else kept her mouth shut about it for a few more weeks until she had made up her mind one way or the other.
Over the next few days, I turned on the Swagman charm and within days she was feeling a lot better about the whole thing, and after a few weeks we were even joking about it. "Remember that time I came all the way back to Japan to be with you, and I had barely even gotten off the plane when you told me you didn't think you loved me anymore? Ah, fun times!"
When I first came back to Japan, the original plan was we would still return to the States, just delay it by a year. Shoko exacted one promise from me: that I wouldn't ask her to quit her job unless I had some stable income already lined up in the US. She had a job with a large salary (a lot more than I made teaching English) and in Japan once you leave the workplace, it is very difficult to return, and almost impossible to return at your previous salary. So she needed proof of stability before she made that jump on faith.
And it was an entirely reasonable request. I couldn't reasonably ask her to quit her job unless I knew what I was going to do in America. It was now time to face the age old problem that has haunted me all my adult life: what do I want to do?
My degree was in teaching, but I had never been very enthusiastic about that from the start and now I was positive I didn't want to do it. After teaching English for so long in Japan, I was sick of kids, sick of classroom control, sick of yelling. And this was Japan! God knows what would await me at some inner city school in the US. Plus every one I knew in education was complaining about government bureaucracy, No Child left Behind, and endless paperwork.
But most of all, the idea of being a teacher was something from my younger days, when I had imagined my shyness and social awkwardness would shed off as I became an adult, and I would become an energetic, extroverted, decisive adult figure who could handle rowdy kids, angry parents,and the other stresses of teaching. Now well into my adult hood, I'm just as shy and socially awkward as ever, and perhaps teaching isn't the best route for me.
I had no interest in the world of business. Although at this point I would certainly have done it eagerly enough for a decent paycheck. But I knew plenty of history majors back home who were struggling to get jobs, and applying instead for telemarketing jobs. (For that matter I knew business majors who couldn't get jobs in business, and joined the army instead).
I had long fantasized about social activist work, but when I was back in the activist scene in Grand Rapids last year I realized most of these people were working for almost no money at all. It was not the kind of job that would promise Shoko the life she wanted. (And that's even if I did get hired. Despite my enthusiasm for various causes, I have little practical skills to offer these organizations).
Then there was the old dream of pursuing a graduate degree in history. Which most of the time I recognized for what it was: a dream. It was 4 years of hard work and financial instability, at the end of which was no guarantee of a job. I had heard the horror stories from all the graduate school drop outs who teach English in Asia. I had even mentioned it to Calvin career services when I made an appointment with them last summer, and they tried to talk me out of it. Still, history was the only thing I was interested in, and whenever pressed about career goals, I would usually answer I had graduate school in the back of my mind.
On the whole, it looked less and less likely I would be able to get away from Japan. But maybe Japan wasn't that bad. My job had its ups and downs, but on the whole it was a nice combination of all the pleasures of teaching (human interaction, helping people) with few of the downsides (classroom control, paperwork, lesson preparation).
Every once and a while I would get homesick, or get a dangerous delusion of self-importance that I was destined for greater things than teaching English in a small rural town in Japan. But more and more I was beginning to resign myself to life in Japan. If I could be with the person I loved, how bad could it be?
The first bump in this road happened when Shoko began telling me she would love to quit her job and become a housewife, if only my salary could support it. And my current salary (roughly $25,000 a year) couldn't support a family, as Shoko repeatedly pointed out to me. She also contrasted my salary with the other eligible Japanese business men she knew, and how much more money she would have if she was marrying one of them.
This was a bit of a surprise, because up until now Shoko had always maintained she wanted to have a life outside of the house and it was important to her to continue working in some form or another where ever our lives might lead us. So, in all my economic calculations until now, I had only worried about supporting her in the event we moved to America. The idea that I should support her in Japan really complicated things. Especially since the job options for a foreigner in the Japanese countryside are rather limited.
There was also another misunderstanding that would grow more and more serious. Shoko saw my chances for success in grad school and eventually a University professorship. I saw grad school as a pipe dream I would talk about whenever I felt tired of the job I was doing now. This turned out to be a serious communication error.
I had mistakenly thought that the desire to return to America and go into grad school was mine entirely, and that Shoko would be just as happy (probably more happy) to stay in Japan. I never realized that she viewed my going to grad school as her ticket out of the work force.
Thus throughout that year, Shoko would ask me, "Are you researching grad schools like we talked about?"
And I would answer something like, "Yeah, yeah." By which I meant I was occasionally thinking about it in a dreamy eyed way over a cup of coffee during my noon lunch. Sometimes it seemed tempting. Usually all the difficulties associated with it convinced me I'd be just as happy staying where I was. Again, I was thinking this was entirely my decision to make, and Shoko would just sigh with relief when I told her I had decided against grad school after all.
Then, one day in the fall, she asked me what schools I was thinking about attending next year. "Next year?" I said. "Oh no no no, next year is way too soon. Now is the time of year where I would have to be wrapping up applications, and I haven't even started. And I would need to get letters of recommendation, study for the GRE test, take the GRE test, talk to professors, etc. I couldn't possibly apply for next year already."
This lead to fireworks like you wouldn't believe. I was never fully forgiven for this. "You told me all these months that you were researching this," Shoko yelled. "And I believed you. What you were really doing was just thinking about it! Anyone could think about it! A smart person researches it while they think about it! I had everything all planned out. We were going to get married this year. Then you were going to start grad school in the fall! I was going to pregnant right before you started studying, so that by the time the baby came around you would already have one year done, and then I could get a year maternity leave and come to America with you. Then I would go back to Japan the third year and get pregnant again....
But all this is ruined now because you lied to me when you said you were researching this. I can't trust you at all."
This was, by the way, not a fight that lasted just one night. This went on for weeks during which I had to beg forgiveness nightly. She threatened to leave me then, unless I would promise to somehow manage to apply for grad school this year. So I promised. I ordered a whole bunch of books off of amazon about GREs and grad school and started working my way through them.
And, if things aren't bad enough, Nova goes bankrupt in October, and for the next 3 months I am officially the unemployed boyfriend, sponging off of his girlfriend's salary.
I already detailed the drama that went on in those months in a seperate post over here:
How none of us were sure if we would get our jobs back or not.
How Shoko wanted me to start up my own company, but I was resistant to doing it.
How we were going to work with another couple to set up our own company, but then Shoko had a falling out with them and wanted me to go solo.
And how finally, when she gave me the option of starting my own company, going to grad school, or getting kicked out of the apartment, I chose to go to grad school.
But, as I also wrote before, I changed the plan. This time I was thinking about going into Japanese history. It wasn't my first love, but it would allow me to build on the past 6 years of living in Japan, it would allow me to study in Japan (taking the financial burdern off of supporting Shoko) and if all else fails, hopefully the Japanese language skills might lead to other job options if I failed as an academic.
This was assuming of course I had Japanse language skills. The programs I looked into were English based, but I tried to convince Shoko it would be pure folly to attempt to study Japanese history at the graduate level without some fluency in the Japanese language. "But it says right on the website it's an English program," Shoko said.
"Trust me," I said, "I can't expect to be competitive in the field of Japanese history without being first competent in the language."
Shoko was very reluctant to agree to this because it meant delaying grad school by yet another year. "Remember we're not so young anymore," she said. "You'll be 30 this spring. You can't delay any longer."
She also refused to believe that Japanese language proficiency would in itself be beneficial. "I hope you're not thinking if you learn Japanese you can get a lot of jobs," she said. "Because you can't. Japanese fluency by itself will at best just get you some low paid entrance position in a Japanese company." (Well, on this point she might well be right. I can't begin to count the amount of people who have much better Japanese than I do and are little better off financially).
Eventually Shoko agreed that I could take the Japanese language course. With the promise that I would continue working while I did it.
Regular readers of this blog of course know that I was eventually successfully in re-arranging my schedule at Nova, and the Japanese language course began about 2 months ago. I have since been exhausted just about everyday.
You would think all this hard work on my part would have alleviated our problems somewhat. But instead things only began to intensify. Shoko began to become more and more uneasy about my prospects at grad school. She repeated to me all the things I had said the previous fall about why I was ambivalent about going, and the horror stories about trying to find secure work as an academic. I shared these concerns, but at this point I had decided this was the path I was committed on, so I gave half hearted rebuttals. It was extremely discouraging to have committed to this course, only to have someone at your side telling you constantly why you couldn't do it. Shoko, for her part, was being continually set upon by her friends and her mother, who were telling her to break up with me because I couldn't possibly have a reliable future.
"But you don't know anything about Japanese history," Shoko repeatedly reminded me. "How do you expect to get into grad school?"
I countered that I was trying to study it in my free time now. But this was a weak argument, because I had no free time.
The irony was I would have loved to sit down with a bunch of textbooks and some snacks and really read up on Japanese history. But I had absolutely no time to do this. I didn't really even have time to keep up with my daily homework. Shoko was also reminding me that I should be researching grad school departments and studying for the GRE test at the same time.
I was searching for various ways to cut my work load down. My first proposal to quit my job was rejected outright and angrily by Shoko. (I wasn't thinking I'd quit working all together, but simply trying to make a go of it teaching private lessons. Shoko was strongly against this.)
Next I asked Nova if they could at least scale down my hours. They said since they were sponsering my visa, I would need to work full time. However If I got my visa changed to a student visa it might be possible.
But In order to get a student visa I would have needed to pay $1000 in entrance fees to the school. (This had been initially waved for me because I was on a working visa). The school suggested that if I was planning on getting married this year anyway, I get a spousal visa instead.
Shoko was strongly against cutting down my hours by even one lesson. Nor did she want me to quit the private lessons I was currently doing. (I have been teaching the daughter of one of her co-workers, and I had picked up a few more private lessons during the time Nova was bankrupt). I tried to tell Shoko I couldn't keep this up and I would have to quit one or the other.
Shoko, on the other hand, was having more and more doubts about the relationship, and would at times cry, at times angrily burst out at me about how little progress I had made researching grad schools, and at times just be stonily silent.
On top of all this, the car broke down and we had to go shopping for a new car. By which I mean primarily Shoko had to go shopping for a new car, because I was busy from 6 Am to 9 PM pretty much 7 days a week.
I began to feel like something had to give. Either I had to cut down on my hours at work, or I had to give up my private lessons, or I had to move closer to Beppu and cut out this 2 hour and 40 minute commute that I was making 5 days a week.
One Friday I got home after an exhausting day of driving back and forth to Beppu, going to school from 9 to 3, and teaching 5 classes in the evening. I wanted to talk to Shoko then, but she was already asleep when I got back.
So I waited for the next day. It was Saturday, I taught 9 lessons at work, and then had to go teach Shoko's co-worker's daughter. I came back again exhausted. Shoko was again asleep, but I woke her up to ask how the search for the car had been. Then I said maybe it would be better if I just got an apartment closer in Beppu so I didn't have to drive a car at all, and maybe the money I would save on car, gas, and insurance would even itself out. Shoko began getting upset again. So finally I said, "Look, if you want to break up with me, it's okay. I'm tired."
She agreed with amazing rapidity. And immediately begin talking about how soon I would move out of the apartment.
I regretted the words as soon as they had been said, but they were said. I guess I'll always wonder what would have happened if I hadn't opened my mouth.
I tried to put the break on things a little bit. "Look, there's no need to move out tomorrow," I said. "Why don't we think about things for a week? We can always break up later." But she responded firmly that she was decided.
While I figured out where I would live, she decided to move back to her mother's house and leave the apartment temporarily to me. But it took her a week before she decided she had enough energy to put up with the hassle of moving. It was a long painful week in which we were living in the same apartment, but she avoided talking to me as much as possible, and I felt like my guts were slowly being ripped out of my stomach. I couldn't concentrate on school, I couldn't concentrate at work, all I could think about was, "she's leaving me, because I don't make enough money."
It was a painful situation to begin with, but the sense of powerlessness made it worse. I tried everything I could think of. I promised to never complain about my work load again. I promised to cut down on my sleep even more, and use the extra time to research my future for an hour every night before going to bed. I made up a list of 15 promises, promising ever single thing I could think of. At every point Shoko just responded, "I told you my mind is made up. The only reason I haven't moved out already is because I haven't had time."
I tried pleading with her, but Shoko said, "Look, if you lose your confidence over this and become pathetic, you're only going to get more unattractive."
I tried to do everything for her I could think of, but she said, "stop treating me like a princess. The problem was never how you treated me. The problem is about your future."
"Look, graduate school isn't that important," I said. "I'll just stay and work at Nova. Lot's of Nova teachers get married to Japanese women and raise a family here in Japan and are perfectly happy doing it."
"On that salary, their wives must have to work also," Shoko responded.
The more I tried to talk to her about what was going on, the angrier she got whenever the subject was brought up, and told me she was sick of talking about the same things over and over again.
"Please try and be a little bit nicer to me," I said at one point. "I came all away around the world and re-arranged my whole life to be with you."
"I know," she said, "and that was so stupid. A man should never re-arrange his life for a girlfriend."
...Well, at present I guess I'm in no state to disagree with this. But I said to her that if she felt so strongly about this, the time to have mentioned it was BEFORE I had come over.
"A Japanese man would never have left everything for a girlfriend," Shoko continued. "The man's purpose is to find a good job and beome financially stable. Then the girlfriend will come to him."
Obviously this is a partially a culture clash, but part of this is universal as well. I seem to have severely underestimated how big a part financial stability plays in being able to form long term relationships. How naive I've been all these years. (Feminist jargon may make a man sound enlightened at a cocktail party, but woe be to the man stupid enough to actually take it seriously).
I wish to hell the break up had been over any other reason besides money, and my inability to promise her financial security. It makes me feel like a failure at life.
Although she did add at one point, "It's not your fault. Partly I'm just tired of dating a foreigner. You can't do anything by yourself in this country. When you get registered for health insurance, or when you buy a car, or when you do anything, I always have to come along to help you understand. In most relationships the man is supposed to do things for the woman, not the other way around."
This didn't make me feel any better actually. In fact it made me feel worse because it was another factor outside of my control.
I said I had asked for her help because I thought it would be easier to have a native Japanese person by my side, but I could probably have struggled through alone. I promised in the future I would never ask her help for anything, but, like all my other promises, it didn't do me any good.
I'm not exactly sure where things stand right now to be honest. Shoko told me that part of her still loves me, and she wants some time apart to think about things. As part of this arrangement, I had to promise to continue at my present job, continue going to school, and continue all my private lessons as pre-conditions for her even considering getting back together with me. So I promised to continue.
However during this time she also said we were officially broken up, and free to date other people while we thought about the future. (Which, may I just say, is a lot nicer deal for her than it is for me. Under the schedule I've agreed to continue, she knows damn well I wouldn't have time to date anyone else even if I wanted to.) I told her I didn't think I could handle her dating other people, but she said, "Think of us as already being broke up and finished. With just the possibility of getting back together. If I wasn't free to date other people, that would defeat the whole purpose of being broke up."
She then added, "If I look at things from a coldly rational standpoint though, I can't see any reason why I should get back together with you."
The frustrating thing is she's probably right.
Link of the Day
On the off chance you haven't seen these already:
John McCain vs. John McCain and John McCain's Youtube problem
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
E-Mail: October 12, 1996
(retrospection)
Another e-mail from the retrospection files. This is a slightly edited version of an e-mail I sent out to a friend on October 12, 1996, shortly after starting Calvin.
How are things going? I imagine by this time your classes have started. Are they going okay? Do you have a lot of homework?
Things are pretty good over here. I've got a lot of homework, but it's not so much that I can't keep up with it.
It's been raining a lot over here, and beginning to get pretty cold. I got completely drenched on Tuesday, because I had to bike through the rain . (For my English assignment, we all have to interview and write about people in retirement homes. I went there by bicycle and got absolutely drenched in the downpour).
Today was an exception though. We had our first warm day in about a week, and it got almost up to 70 degrees. (I think someone told me 67 degrees).
I haven't done any swimming for about a month now. I really don't intend to keep it up either. I'm done swimming competively.
Link of the Day
FBI Looking for Informants to Infiltrate Vegan Potlucks
Another e-mail from the retrospection files. This is a slightly edited version of an e-mail I sent out to a friend on October 12, 1996, shortly after starting Calvin.
How are things going? I imagine by this time your classes have started. Are they going okay? Do you have a lot of homework?
Things are pretty good over here. I've got a lot of homework, but it's not so much that I can't keep up with it.
It's been raining a lot over here, and beginning to get pretty cold. I got completely drenched on Tuesday, because I had to bike through the rain . (For my English assignment, we all have to interview and write about people in retirement homes. I went there by bicycle and got absolutely drenched in the downpour).
Today was an exception though. We had our first warm day in about a week, and it got almost up to 70 degrees. (I think someone told me 67 degrees).
I haven't done any swimming for about a month now. I really don't intend to keep it up either. I'm done swimming competively.
Link of the Day
FBI Looking for Informants to Infiltrate Vegan Potlucks
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Second Grade Journal: 1985-1986
(Retrospection)
When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher gave us a journal in which we could write whatever we wanted to.
It was my first journal, and I thought it was a really cool idea. I spent a most of our free study periods writing away in the thing.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I had written something of value in it. Instead of being filled with my thoughts on the world, or childhood memories, the whole thing is just me writing about the movies I saw. And what's worse, instead of reviewing these movies, I just try to to retell everything that happened. (I don't know why I thought this was a good use of time.) So, as you can imagine, instead of containing a lot of valuable memories, this journal is just mostly crap.
However in a strange way, long before the age of blogging this journal ended up being an eerily accurate prediction of what I would write on this blog 20 years later: lots of time spent writing, very little of much value, and most of it just recounting what movies I had seen.
You'll notice that every single one of the movies I wrote about in this journal were Disney movies, and there's a very simple reason for that. When I was in 2nd grade, the only TV I was allowed to watch was PBS and The Disney Channel.
(We weren't technically allowed to watch He-man, Voltran, Transformers, or the other popular 80s cartoons, although in reality we saw them from time to time at friends' houses and when my mom wasn't home and our dad or the babysitter was watching us).
Although I thought it was the height of injustice not to be allowed to watch those cartoons like most of my school-mates could, I also really got into the Disney channel at the time. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to supplement my Disney viewing with regular TV, but as you can see from this journal I really fell in love with Disney. I was still at a young enough age to enjoy the old Disney cartoons, and shows like "Zorro" (W) and "Davy Crockett" (W) satisfied my 7 year old desire for action and swashbuckling.
(In fact, come to think of it a lot of those old Disney adventure movies and TV shows were probably just as violent as those afternoon cartoons we weren't allowed to watch. I never questioned the incongruity of it at the time though. I guess it must have been just easier for my parents to say everything Disney was okay than to fight battles over every single TV show.)
...So anyway, long story short, if this journal seems rather "Disney Centric", that's why. [Oh, and one final note: Back in 1985 the Disney Channel was a lot different than it is now. Although it has since remodeled itself as the new hip pre-teen channel, back in mid-80s, the Disney Channel existed almost exclusively just to air out the Disney vault and re-run old Disney movies and TV shows from the 1950s,60s and 70s].
In transferring this old pencil written journal into blog form, I've taken liberties here and there. I've corrected spelling in places, and even changed syntax when I thought the meaning wasn't clear. But where ever possible I tried to leave the original idiomatic grammar of a second grader in tact. Hopefully this doesn't result in too much of a bi-polar feel.
You'll also notice I never get too far on any one topic before I switch into another topic. Sometimes I'll go for as long as a paragraph. Sometimes I'll just write one sentence.
To understand this journal, you need to imagine it through the eyes of a 7 year old who had just barely learned how to read and write, awkwardly gripping his pencil in his hand and laboriously writing each letter. It would take me several free study periods spread out across many days to write one of the larger paragraphs, and you can imagine I didn't have the patience back then to stick with anything that long.
Anyway, I'm going to be interspersing this whole thing with commentary throughout, but without any further ado here's the beginning of the journal.
I am a journal. If your name is not Joel, please close this book.
Our first story: on my birthday I got a transformer. His name is Optimus Prime. I like him. I got other transformers at home. One of them is named Jetfire. My Dad gave him to me. I like him too. Do you know who gave me Optimus Prime? My Grandma Swagman. A nice story.
---I must have written this in the beginning of the school year recounting my 7th birthday from the previous year, April 1985.
I was allowed to have "Transformers" toys, but not to watch the cartoon. (The same held true for He-man and Voltron toys). This actually seems like more of a contradiction now than it did then. At the time, it seemed like it was every boy's right to have "Transformers" action figures, whether or not they could watch the show.
Our second story is me telling you a story: the Black Cauldron. It began with a boy who was an assistant pig keeper for an old man. A horned king had once destroyed their country. The boy's name is Tarn. Tarn's pig was a magical pig. It can look into the future. Tarn wanted to be a knight. Everyday Tarn said, "I want to be a knight in shining armour. One day it happened that Tarn woke up. He was the one who made breakfast. He made breakfast and went to the window. It was not a real window, just a square carved out of the wall. He went to the window to dream about being a knight. The old man made fun of the horned king. The old man had a cat. Breakfast began to over boil and no one noticed except the cat and the cat was the only one who was hungry, and he made such funny actions that the old man noticed. But Tarn, who's job it was, did not notice. The old man got mad. But the old man talked kind because he was kind.
"Tarn," he said, "What are you doing by the window."
Tarn did not answer but said the same as always, "I want to be a knight in shining armour.
"Oh," said the old man. That--
Ah, "The Black Cauldron" (W). Remember that? Even now thinking about it brings me back to the 80s and tie in children's marketing. I can almost still taste the cheese poofs that had the special Black Cauldron sticker inside.
Now I am sorry but that story is too long. Our third story is me and my sister are going to build a fort. I built it. It got wrecked.
I am going to stop numbering our stories, but I will say "next story". Our next story: a little bit from Condorman. The ending part of Condorman. "Quick, into the boat," was the word and in went Condorman, Harry, and Laser Lady. The enemy was after Laser Lady. The boat had lasers in it. The enemy chased them in another boat. The enemy chased them in several boats. Harry grabbed the laser gun, but he couldn't hit anyone.
"Shoot better," Condorman yelled.
--Anyone else remember "Condorman" (W) ? I've never heard of it since, but I loved it as a kid.
It was a Disney movie, and it was run on the Disney Channel, which meant I was allowed to watch it.
That is the end of that story. Now I am tell you about Halloween. I was a knight, my sister was a Ewok, and my brother was a cowboy. Something strange happened. After we finished trick or treating, my dad picked up my brother's cowboy hat. There was a piece of candy on the brim of the hat, but no one knew how it got there.
Now my class is studying Indians. We have Indian names. My Indian name is "Spotted Tail." My friend David's name is "White Chief."
--If you've got a long memory, you might remember the above paragraph. I used it as a retrospection entry before back in 2007. At the time I was thinking I would do this journal in installments, but now I think it makes sense just to put it all in one long entry.
You all know this is a journal and me and my sister are making another journal just for kids.
Now, you've all read about a lot of adventures in this journal, but I would like to write about some more action. I think mountain stories are the best. Like "Third Man on the Mountain". You all probably think that the name of this story means that only two men ever went up on the mountain, and then after a long time a 3rd man climbed up the mountain. But no, that is not how it got its name. Its name is "3rd Man on the Mountain" because in this story a man looked through his telescope and saw 3 men climbing and said, "There's a 3rd man on the mountain."
--"Third Man on the Mountain" (W) was another Disney movie being run on the Disney channel. And another movie I loved as a kid. Haven't seen it since, but there's a thorough online review of it here for anyone interested.
I am going finish telling you that story later.
Now we have a baby sister. Her name is Jessica. Now we have me--Joel, Kyle, my sister Kirstin, and my second sister Jessica. I am in 2nd grade. Kirstin is in Kindergarten. Kyle is 2 years old and Jessica is a baby.
Now I've told you that Kirstin is in Kindergarten and I am in 2nd grade, but I did not tell you what are ages are. Well, mine is 8 and Kirstin is 6.
Now I'm going to make up an adventure for all 4 of us.
One day we were driving in China. When we stopped the car, 2 men with guns started shooting them at us. They were hiding in the bushes, but we could see them. Then they ran forward to attack us. I unbuckled my seatbelt. My Kindergarten sister unbuckled hers. Kyle unbuckled his and I got Jessica out of the car seat. That is how our adventure began.
--I was in second grade when my youngest sister Jessica was added to the family. I still remember picking her up at the airport, and making her laugh by hopping around on one leg. (This worked for a while, and then she started crying again).
If you're well versed in the Disney archives (as I was back then) you know that there have been tons of Disney movies about a group of kids who are separated from their parents and have to make their own way through a series of adventures and defeat the bad guys all on their own. No doubt I was heavily influenced by all of this. Although even if I hadn't been, I suspect the idea of saving the day all by themselves is probably a pretty standard fantasy for children anyway.
As usual, I got one paragraph into this adventure story, and then I lost interested and wandered into another topic.
Now I want to write about "One hundred and one Dalmatians". But first I would like to tell you what happened yesterday.
Yesterday a space shuttle exploded and seven people died.
Now I want to tell you what I got for Christmas. I got Lion Voltron. I got the Transformer's Racing track. I got Webstor. He's a He-Man action figure. He came with a rope, that he can go up. I got a book from my dad. I got a mobile car. I got a photo album, a clock a bookmark. I got clothes. The book my dad gave me is "The Black Stallion." My Dad was also the one who gave me the Lion Voltron and the transformers racing track. My sister gave me a Go-bot. My mom gave me the mobile car. My Grandma Swagman gave me a transformer and a nice sweater and a game called "connect four". It's fun. I got a squirt gun from a boy in my class. I got a Garfield eraser from my teacher. I got Webstor from my Aunt Mary. I gave my sister "Crystal Castle" and my Dad gave her She-Ra.
--This is another section that I've used before in my retrospections. At the time I claimed it was a writing assignment, which was perhaps a bit misleading. It was a writing assignment in the sense that our teacher encouraged us to write about it in our journal. It was never something that was collected and graded. Which is why I only gave the Challenger explosion one sentence before my usual short attention moved me onto other topics.
When I claim to give my sister the "Crystal Castle" (W) playset, that just means I selected it. My dad paid the money for it.
I think "The Black Stallion" book referred to here wasn't the genuine article, but a kids book based on the movie--lots of pictures from the movie and text that had the barebones story on each page. I loved this picture book, and read it over and over again.
I never did read the real book. I started it a couple times, but it never grabbed my interest, probably because I already knew the story.
Lion Voltron (W), with the 5 different robot lions that transformed and then connected to make one big robot, was the popular toy that year, as you may remember. And it was a really cool concept. It was like 5 different transformers in one. Every kid had to have it.
You probably also remember, if you had one, that it was one of the most fragile pieces of crap ever. Parts started breaking off of it left and right almost from the moment you opened the box.
I had somewhat of a fair warning on this, as my friends at school had been complaining about how easily their Voltron figures broke before I even got mine. So I wasn't very shocked when mine started doing the same thing. I tried to be careful with it, but pieces will snap off just from moving the thing around.
My dad declared at one point, "I will not tolerate a toy that breaks so much." He brought it back to the toy store and demanded a new one in exchange.
The new one faired slightly better, but inevitably some pieces eventually snapped off of that one as well.
February 26, 1986: Good, now I like a man who died. His name is Walt Disney. He is very famous. He made many movies, like "The Black Cauldron". You may think "The Black Cauldron" is dumb, but it is not. It is an adventure story. Remember the horned king? He came back and Tarn has to fight an evil power that is held inside a living Black Cauldron. The black Cauldron is living and evil can only come out if the Black Cauldron makes it. When the horned King gets the Black Cauldron, then the fighting becomes twice as hard. But thanks to a little guy named Georgi, they saved the world and Tarn learned a lesson.
February 27: Walt Disney was a movie maker and he made the Black Cauldron. Walt Disney could make a movie about any kind of animal, including the ones that are extinct. He made "The Black Hole." I will tell you that story.
March 5: The USS Palmino was in space when they saw the USS Signus. Now the Signus had disappeared many years ago, so the crew was curious .
Then Kate said, "I saw something move. There are people on board."
"Let's take a look," said the Captain.
They came just a little bit too close, and the black hole started to suck them up Vincent, the ship's robot, went on to the top of the ship to help.
After a second, the captain said to Kate, "Make contact with Vincent." You see, Kate and Vincent could make contact with each other. Kate tried.
After another second, the captain asked, "Anything?"
"No," said Kate. Then she said, "Oh, here comes something now."
That's all I remember about "The Black Hole."
Remember "The Black Hole" (W)? Another bad science fiction movie from the 80s. Despite the black overtones of this movie, I was allowed to see it because it was Disney.
Actually it was a bit of fight to be able to see this. My parents bought the story book and tape for us to keep us occupied on car trips, so I was familiar with the movie. And it was aired that year on the Disney Channel. My mom watched it first to make sure it was alright for us, and only after a lot of pleading were me and my sister allowed to watch it.
I absolutely loved this movie when I was in second grade. But like a lot of things I liked back then, watching it now the movie has not aged well.
April 9: Well, here we go on another adventure.
Actually, no, let's forget about that.
Well, Walt Disney sure is great, as you can see. OK.
April 16: I will tell you something. My birthday is coming up soon and I hope to get a Bambi record. Do you know who Bambi is? Well, I will tell you. He once was a prince, now he's a king. I will tell you his story:
April 30: A prince was born. All the animals came. All the rabbits and bunnies, including one bunny named "Thumper", who said, "What are you going to name him?"
And the mother said, "I think I will name him 'Bambi'."
Then Bambi tried to walk. Now that is part of his story.
Bambi always had a special place in my nostalgic heart, because it was the first movie I saw. My mom and aunt took me to see it when it was being re-shown in theaters sometime in the earlier 80s.
I'm not sure what I mean when I say I wanted a "Bambi Record". I already had a Bambi story book and record that went along with it. Maybe I meant I wanted it recorded on VHS. I don't remember exactly when our family got our first VCR, but it was around about this time, maybe 3rd grade.
(For a long time, Disney animated movies like Bambi weren't available on video because they were still re-releasing them into the theaters every 5 years. I didn't always understand these marketing issues as a kid though, and kept asking for videos that hadn't been released yet.)
May 8: Walt Disney also made "Return to Treasure Island." I want to tell that story, but to tell that story I will first have to tell the story of "Treasure Island". Here we go.
May 14: There was a boy whose father owned an Inn. And the boys name was Jim Hawkins. One day a visitor came. The visitor asked the father if he had some rooms, and the father said yes.
The father asked the visitor what his name was, and the stranger did not tell his name. But he said, "Call me captain. Yes, call me captain."
Then he said, "I'm a plain man. Bacon and eggs are all I need. And rum. And a place where I can warm my boots."
Jim's father said, "You can stay."
The Captain was a very silent man. All day long he sat in the parlor drinking rum, but at night he haunted Jim's nightmares.
Actually, let's let Jim tell the rest of the story.
OK. One day, said Jim, the Captain called me into his room and said, "Do you see this here penny piece boy?"
I said, "Yes sir I do."
Then he said, "I'll give you one of these every month if you keep your eyes open for a man with one leg."
The Captain seemed terrified of the one legged man, but no matter how long I looked for him, I saw the one legged man only in my nightmares.
Soon, my father became very ill. Our doctor, Doctor Livesly, came often to help him. Sometimes Doctor Livesly stayed for dinner. "Delicious meal, Mrs Hawkins," he would say.
One day Doctor Livesly asked me, "Doesn't that man frighten you?"
I said, "Yes sir."
Sunday, the captain came over to our table and said, "Silence there between decks!"
Doctor Livesly asked, "Were you speaking to me sir?"
The Captain said, "Aye, That I were San Pale--."
Doctor Livesly interupted and said, "Now you listen to me sir. If you keep on drinking rum, you will soon die. And perhaps that would not be a bad thing."
At that, the Captian drew his knife and said, "You take those words back!"
But the Doctor answered in a calm and steady voice and said, "Put that knife away, or I promise you that you will go to the gallows. I'm a judge sir, as well as a doctor, and if I hear even one complaint against you, I'll have you thrown into the gallows for many nights."
After that, the Captain was very good, but he stayed with us that long night as my poor father's heart grew worse and worse.
Then one January morning, another stranger came. The stranger asked, "Have you seen my mate Bill?"
I said, "I don't know your mate bill sir. We do have one guest that asked if we'd call him captain."
The stranger was pale and evil looking. Two fingers on his left hand were missing, but he wasn't the one legged man. In fact he didn't even seem like a sailor at all. Then he said, "I think your guest is Bill. I'll wait for him I will."
Then he made me hide behind the door with him.
When the Captian came back, the stranger reached out and grabbed the Captain. "Hello Bill," he said. "Remember your old shipmate? Have the boy fetch some rum, Bill, while you and I have a good honest talk."
I tried to listen from the next room. I could hear nothing for a long time, and then they began to shout and yell at eachother. I heard the Captain yell, "No, I'll never give it to you. I'd rather die." Then there was more shouting, followed by the sounds of swords.
Then Black Dog, the name of the stranger, ran out the door. I ran to the captian and asked, "Sir, are you okay?"
The captain did not answer but said, "Rum, Jim, fetch me Rum." Then he fell to the floor face first.
The Captain was dead.
Now Jim, stop. Tell us all the details.
Ok, ok, well the captain was killed. I went on a ship with some other men and a crew. The crew and the cook attacked us. But in the end we won. And the crook turned out to be my friend. The end
Ok, so that story was not by Walt Disney. But Walt Disney made the movie of it. And Walt Disney not only made the movie, but he made "Return to Treasure Island". And I'll bet he made "The Third Man on the Mountain".
Did anyone else see "Return to Treasure Island" (W)? It was a mini-series that was rerun occasionally on the Disney Channel back then. I was absolutely obsessed with it. I thought it was the greatest show ever. After watching it I would be pumped up for hours, pretending I was sword fighting in the backyard and singing the theme song to myself.
I was also obsessed with Treasure Island, a story I knew via the Fisher-Price delux comic book and tape set. I listened to it over and over again until I had it memorized, as you can see from the passage above. (I wrote that whole thing at school from memory). In fact even now as I re-read it, I can still hear the voice actors and the narration from the tape in my head. There's a bit of awkwardness in the retelling, since the version I had memorized in my head was all in the first person, and I attempted to re-write it in the 3rd person. Eventually I gave up and just and said, "let's let Jim tell the rest of the story." There were 5 other comic books and audio tapes in the series, and eventually our family collected them all (Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood). And all of them I pretty much listened to until I had them memorized.
(I guess there must not have been too much else to do back then. We were probably the last generation before kids just got overwhelmed with media and video games . We didn't get a nintendo until a few years later.
Plus I had parents who very closely limited my TV intake.)
These books (and similar "classics for children" series) both caused me to fall in love with the classics, and also kind of ruined them for me. Several times I tried to read the real "Treasure Island" book by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I could never get through it. When you have the whole story memorized, what's the point?
The same is true for all those other books. (Other than "Robinson Crusoe", which I read in a class at Calvin because I had to. And I found out that the real book is a lot more dry and boring than the comic book version would lead you to believe.)
I never did finish "The Third Man on the Mountain" story. Well, I will not tell that story now.
And remember the story about my family in China. Well, once all the children got out of the car, we killed the two men. The end.
Part 3 of this journal is all about my family. Kyle and Jessica are adopted from Korea. Kyle has a hole in his mouth, and he can not talk good. Jessica has only one arm and a half of an arm.
The whole family has a pen-pal from Korea. And I also have a penpal of my own.
I have sandy colored hair, and so does Kirstin. Jessica, Kyle and Dad have black hair. Mom has brown hair.
We have a dog. His name is Brandy. He acts like a watch dog. But really he is a Lhasa Apso. His fur is gray. It is my job to give him his food and water. He s a strange dog.
He is a strange Dog. He doesn't like mats or baskets. The only bones that he likes are milk bones doggy treats.
And he sits at the window barking at everybody for most of the day. If someone comes in, and it's someone he knows, he doesn't bark at them.
When he gets outside, he runs away a lot, but he always comes back. When he gets outside, he will chase joggers and bikers. Once he got away one the same day that Grandma Swagman was coming over. Grandma Swagman found him tied up to a lamp post. Some jogger or biker must have tied him up. I remember Kirstin was being a real brat at the time. Well, anyway, some jogger or biker had tied him up. When Grandma Swagman saw him, she untied him. Brandy did not bark because he knows Grandma Swagman.
You know, I never minded Brandy's barking all that much. Maybe because the dog was around before I was, I just grew up with it. Or maybe I was young enough that I could still tune it out. But it used to drive my parents crazy. Although a bit of internet research (W) reveals that the Lhasa Apso was specifically bred to for the purpose of barking at everything in sight.
You know, Brandy being a watch dog makes me remember a joke. Here it is:
Bob: Why is your dog running around like that?
Judy: He's a watch dog. He's winding himself up.
That's all the news about Brandy I know of. You all know about Grandma Swagman. She is the mother of my dad, by the way. But who was the mother of my mom? My other Grandma. Grandma Dik.
You know something about me? I am very good at creative writing. Here is one of my stories. It is called "The 3 Giraffes" by Joel Swagman.
Once upon a time there were three little giraffes.
The first giraffe built a home in a haystack.
The second giraffe built a home in a leaf pile.
The third giraffe built a home in a wood pile.
But little did they know a bunch of pirates were looking for giraffe soup....
My second grade teacher gave me an "O" for outstanding on creative writing. It was the only "O" I recieved on my report card. (Everything else was marked "S" for satisfactory.)
She also gave me a lot of praise for my stories, and even went through the trouble of signing me up for "Young Author's Festival at Calvin" the following year, even though I was no longer in her class.
I had never thought of myself as a writer before, but this put the idea into my mind. And in fact it was a notion that stayed with me for a long time, even when I got into high school and my English teachers there were a lot less enthusiastic about my writing abilities.
As a result of this, I developed the hobby of writing stories (mostly for my own amusement) all through my childhood, high school, and even my time at Calvin . (And although I'm somewhat embarrased to admit it, I still fool around with writing fiction from time to time even today.)
Like most amateur writers, I never worked constantly on anything as a child, but wrote in the usual fits and starts. I spent more time walking around day dreaming and thinking of ideas than I ever got around to writing on paper.
The "Three Giraffe Story" was originally a school assignment. But my teacher praised my story so highly that I became very proud of it. She asked me for permission to photocopy it so she could keep it in her files, and I was unbelievable proud of myself. For reasons I don't really remember, I decided I wanted to rewrite the whole thing down into my journal. I guess I just wanted to keep all my writing in the same place.
By the time I started re-copying my "Giraffe Story", the year was over and I was in 3rd grade. I worked on the table in the basement slowly rewriting everything, still in the phase were writing down anything was a laborious project.
The papers were left on the downstairs table for several nights, and eventually my mom just went through and threw everything out except the journal itself.
I was devestated and in tears. My mom agreed to call up my old second grade teacher, and she still had a copy of my story in her files which she recopied and gave back to me.
A few years ago I posted this story on one of my other blogs, so it seems unnecessary to re-post it here. Just click on the link if you're interested.
When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher gave us a journal in which we could write whatever we wanted to.
It was my first journal, and I thought it was a really cool idea. I spent a most of our free study periods writing away in the thing.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I had written something of value in it. Instead of being filled with my thoughts on the world, or childhood memories, the whole thing is just me writing about the movies I saw. And what's worse, instead of reviewing these movies, I just try to to retell everything that happened. (I don't know why I thought this was a good use of time.) So, as you can imagine, instead of containing a lot of valuable memories, this journal is just mostly crap.
However in a strange way, long before the age of blogging this journal ended up being an eerily accurate prediction of what I would write on this blog 20 years later: lots of time spent writing, very little of much value, and most of it just recounting what movies I had seen.
You'll notice that every single one of the movies I wrote about in this journal were Disney movies, and there's a very simple reason for that. When I was in 2nd grade, the only TV I was allowed to watch was PBS and The Disney Channel.
(We weren't technically allowed to watch He-man, Voltran, Transformers, or the other popular 80s cartoons, although in reality we saw them from time to time at friends' houses and when my mom wasn't home and our dad or the babysitter was watching us).
Although I thought it was the height of injustice not to be allowed to watch those cartoons like most of my school-mates could, I also really got into the Disney channel at the time. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to supplement my Disney viewing with regular TV, but as you can see from this journal I really fell in love with Disney. I was still at a young enough age to enjoy the old Disney cartoons, and shows like "Zorro" (W) and "Davy Crockett" (W) satisfied my 7 year old desire for action and swashbuckling.
(In fact, come to think of it a lot of those old Disney adventure movies and TV shows were probably just as violent as those afternoon cartoons we weren't allowed to watch. I never questioned the incongruity of it at the time though. I guess it must have been just easier for my parents to say everything Disney was okay than to fight battles over every single TV show.)
...So anyway, long story short, if this journal seems rather "Disney Centric", that's why. [Oh, and one final note: Back in 1985 the Disney Channel was a lot different than it is now. Although it has since remodeled itself as the new hip pre-teen channel, back in mid-80s, the Disney Channel existed almost exclusively just to air out the Disney vault and re-run old Disney movies and TV shows from the 1950s,60s and 70s].
In transferring this old pencil written journal into blog form, I've taken liberties here and there. I've corrected spelling in places, and even changed syntax when I thought the meaning wasn't clear. But where ever possible I tried to leave the original idiomatic grammar of a second grader in tact. Hopefully this doesn't result in too much of a bi-polar feel.
You'll also notice I never get too far on any one topic before I switch into another topic. Sometimes I'll go for as long as a paragraph. Sometimes I'll just write one sentence.
To understand this journal, you need to imagine it through the eyes of a 7 year old who had just barely learned how to read and write, awkwardly gripping his pencil in his hand and laboriously writing each letter. It would take me several free study periods spread out across many days to write one of the larger paragraphs, and you can imagine I didn't have the patience back then to stick with anything that long.
Anyway, I'm going to be interspersing this whole thing with commentary throughout, but without any further ado here's the beginning of the journal.
I am a journal. If your name is not Joel, please close this book.
Our first story: on my birthday I got a transformer. His name is Optimus Prime. I like him. I got other transformers at home. One of them is named Jetfire. My Dad gave him to me. I like him too. Do you know who gave me Optimus Prime? My Grandma Swagman. A nice story.
---I must have written this in the beginning of the school year recounting my 7th birthday from the previous year, April 1985.
I was allowed to have "Transformers" toys, but not to watch the cartoon. (The same held true for He-man and Voltron toys). This actually seems like more of a contradiction now than it did then. At the time, it seemed like it was every boy's right to have "Transformers" action figures, whether or not they could watch the show.
Our second story is me telling you a story: the Black Cauldron. It began with a boy who was an assistant pig keeper for an old man. A horned king had once destroyed their country. The boy's name is Tarn. Tarn's pig was a magical pig. It can look into the future. Tarn wanted to be a knight. Everyday Tarn said, "I want to be a knight in shining armour. One day it happened that Tarn woke up. He was the one who made breakfast. He made breakfast and went to the window. It was not a real window, just a square carved out of the wall. He went to the window to dream about being a knight. The old man made fun of the horned king. The old man had a cat. Breakfast began to over boil and no one noticed except the cat and the cat was the only one who was hungry, and he made such funny actions that the old man noticed. But Tarn, who's job it was, did not notice. The old man got mad. But the old man talked kind because he was kind.
"Tarn," he said, "What are you doing by the window."
Tarn did not answer but said the same as always, "I want to be a knight in shining armour.
"Oh," said the old man. That--
Ah, "The Black Cauldron" (W). Remember that? Even now thinking about it brings me back to the 80s and tie in children's marketing. I can almost still taste the cheese poofs that had the special Black Cauldron sticker inside.
Now I am sorry but that story is too long. Our third story is me and my sister are going to build a fort. I built it. It got wrecked.
I am going to stop numbering our stories, but I will say "next story". Our next story: a little bit from Condorman. The ending part of Condorman. "Quick, into the boat," was the word and in went Condorman, Harry, and Laser Lady. The enemy was after Laser Lady. The boat had lasers in it. The enemy chased them in another boat. The enemy chased them in several boats. Harry grabbed the laser gun, but he couldn't hit anyone.
"Shoot better," Condorman yelled.
--Anyone else remember "Condorman" (W) ? I've never heard of it since, but I loved it as a kid.
It was a Disney movie, and it was run on the Disney Channel, which meant I was allowed to watch it.
That is the end of that story. Now I am tell you about Halloween. I was a knight, my sister was a Ewok, and my brother was a cowboy. Something strange happened. After we finished trick or treating, my dad picked up my brother's cowboy hat. There was a piece of candy on the brim of the hat, but no one knew how it got there.
Now my class is studying Indians. We have Indian names. My Indian name is "Spotted Tail." My friend David's name is "White Chief."
--If you've got a long memory, you might remember the above paragraph. I used it as a retrospection entry before back in 2007. At the time I was thinking I would do this journal in installments, but now I think it makes sense just to put it all in one long entry.
You all know this is a journal and me and my sister are making another journal just for kids.
Now, you've all read about a lot of adventures in this journal, but I would like to write about some more action. I think mountain stories are the best. Like "Third Man on the Mountain". You all probably think that the name of this story means that only two men ever went up on the mountain, and then after a long time a 3rd man climbed up the mountain. But no, that is not how it got its name. Its name is "3rd Man on the Mountain" because in this story a man looked through his telescope and saw 3 men climbing and said, "There's a 3rd man on the mountain."
--"Third Man on the Mountain" (W) was another Disney movie being run on the Disney channel. And another movie I loved as a kid. Haven't seen it since, but there's a thorough online review of it here for anyone interested.
I am going finish telling you that story later.
Now we have a baby sister. Her name is Jessica. Now we have me--Joel, Kyle, my sister Kirstin, and my second sister Jessica. I am in 2nd grade. Kirstin is in Kindergarten. Kyle is 2 years old and Jessica is a baby.
Now I've told you that Kirstin is in Kindergarten and I am in 2nd grade, but I did not tell you what are ages are. Well, mine is 8 and Kirstin is 6.
Now I'm going to make up an adventure for all 4 of us.
One day we were driving in China. When we stopped the car, 2 men with guns started shooting them at us. They were hiding in the bushes, but we could see them. Then they ran forward to attack us. I unbuckled my seatbelt. My Kindergarten sister unbuckled hers. Kyle unbuckled his and I got Jessica out of the car seat. That is how our adventure began.
--I was in second grade when my youngest sister Jessica was added to the family. I still remember picking her up at the airport, and making her laugh by hopping around on one leg. (This worked for a while, and then she started crying again).
If you're well versed in the Disney archives (as I was back then) you know that there have been tons of Disney movies about a group of kids who are separated from their parents and have to make their own way through a series of adventures and defeat the bad guys all on their own. No doubt I was heavily influenced by all of this. Although even if I hadn't been, I suspect the idea of saving the day all by themselves is probably a pretty standard fantasy for children anyway.
As usual, I got one paragraph into this adventure story, and then I lost interested and wandered into another topic.
Now I want to write about "One hundred and one Dalmatians". But first I would like to tell you what happened yesterday.
Yesterday a space shuttle exploded and seven people died.
Now I want to tell you what I got for Christmas. I got Lion Voltron. I got the Transformer's Racing track. I got Webstor. He's a He-Man action figure. He came with a rope, that he can go up. I got a book from my dad. I got a mobile car. I got a photo album, a clock a bookmark. I got clothes. The book my dad gave me is "The Black Stallion." My Dad was also the one who gave me the Lion Voltron and the transformers racing track. My sister gave me a Go-bot. My mom gave me the mobile car. My Grandma Swagman gave me a transformer and a nice sweater and a game called "connect four". It's fun. I got a squirt gun from a boy in my class. I got a Garfield eraser from my teacher. I got Webstor from my Aunt Mary. I gave my sister "Crystal Castle" and my Dad gave her She-Ra.
--This is another section that I've used before in my retrospections. At the time I claimed it was a writing assignment, which was perhaps a bit misleading. It was a writing assignment in the sense that our teacher encouraged us to write about it in our journal. It was never something that was collected and graded. Which is why I only gave the Challenger explosion one sentence before my usual short attention moved me onto other topics.
When I claim to give my sister the "Crystal Castle" (W) playset, that just means I selected it. My dad paid the money for it.
I think "The Black Stallion" book referred to here wasn't the genuine article, but a kids book based on the movie--lots of pictures from the movie and text that had the barebones story on each page. I loved this picture book, and read it over and over again.
I never did read the real book. I started it a couple times, but it never grabbed my interest, probably because I already knew the story.
Lion Voltron (W), with the 5 different robot lions that transformed and then connected to make one big robot, was the popular toy that year, as you may remember. And it was a really cool concept. It was like 5 different transformers in one. Every kid had to have it.
You probably also remember, if you had one, that it was one of the most fragile pieces of crap ever. Parts started breaking off of it left and right almost from the moment you opened the box.
I had somewhat of a fair warning on this, as my friends at school had been complaining about how easily their Voltron figures broke before I even got mine. So I wasn't very shocked when mine started doing the same thing. I tried to be careful with it, but pieces will snap off just from moving the thing around.
My dad declared at one point, "I will not tolerate a toy that breaks so much." He brought it back to the toy store and demanded a new one in exchange.
The new one faired slightly better, but inevitably some pieces eventually snapped off of that one as well.
February 26, 1986: Good, now I like a man who died. His name is Walt Disney. He is very famous. He made many movies, like "The Black Cauldron". You may think "The Black Cauldron" is dumb, but it is not. It is an adventure story. Remember the horned king? He came back and Tarn has to fight an evil power that is held inside a living Black Cauldron. The black Cauldron is living and evil can only come out if the Black Cauldron makes it. When the horned King gets the Black Cauldron, then the fighting becomes twice as hard. But thanks to a little guy named Georgi, they saved the world and Tarn learned a lesson.
February 27: Walt Disney was a movie maker and he made the Black Cauldron. Walt Disney could make a movie about any kind of animal, including the ones that are extinct. He made "The Black Hole." I will tell you that story.
March 5: The USS Palmino was in space when they saw the USS Signus. Now the Signus had disappeared many years ago, so the crew was curious .
Then Kate said, "I saw something move. There are people on board."
"Let's take a look," said the Captain.
They came just a little bit too close, and the black hole started to suck them up Vincent, the ship's robot, went on to the top of the ship to help.
After a second, the captain said to Kate, "Make contact with Vincent." You see, Kate and Vincent could make contact with each other. Kate tried.
After another second, the captain asked, "Anything?"
"No," said Kate. Then she said, "Oh, here comes something now."
That's all I remember about "The Black Hole."
Remember "The Black Hole" (W)? Another bad science fiction movie from the 80s. Despite the black overtones of this movie, I was allowed to see it because it was Disney.
Actually it was a bit of fight to be able to see this. My parents bought the story book and tape for us to keep us occupied on car trips, so I was familiar with the movie. And it was aired that year on the Disney Channel. My mom watched it first to make sure it was alright for us, and only after a lot of pleading were me and my sister allowed to watch it.
I absolutely loved this movie when I was in second grade. But like a lot of things I liked back then, watching it now the movie has not aged well.
April 9: Well, here we go on another adventure.
Actually, no, let's forget about that.
Well, Walt Disney sure is great, as you can see. OK.
April 16: I will tell you something. My birthday is coming up soon and I hope to get a Bambi record. Do you know who Bambi is? Well, I will tell you. He once was a prince, now he's a king. I will tell you his story:
April 30: A prince was born. All the animals came. All the rabbits and bunnies, including one bunny named "Thumper", who said, "What are you going to name him?"
And the mother said, "I think I will name him 'Bambi'."
Then Bambi tried to walk. Now that is part of his story.
Bambi always had a special place in my nostalgic heart, because it was the first movie I saw. My mom and aunt took me to see it when it was being re-shown in theaters sometime in the earlier 80s.
I'm not sure what I mean when I say I wanted a "Bambi Record". I already had a Bambi story book and record that went along with it. Maybe I meant I wanted it recorded on VHS. I don't remember exactly when our family got our first VCR, but it was around about this time, maybe 3rd grade.
(For a long time, Disney animated movies like Bambi weren't available on video because they were still re-releasing them into the theaters every 5 years. I didn't always understand these marketing issues as a kid though, and kept asking for videos that hadn't been released yet.)
May 8: Walt Disney also made "Return to Treasure Island." I want to tell that story, but to tell that story I will first have to tell the story of "Treasure Island". Here we go.
May 14: There was a boy whose father owned an Inn. And the boys name was Jim Hawkins. One day a visitor came. The visitor asked the father if he had some rooms, and the father said yes.
The father asked the visitor what his name was, and the stranger did not tell his name. But he said, "Call me captain. Yes, call me captain."
Then he said, "I'm a plain man. Bacon and eggs are all I need. And rum. And a place where I can warm my boots."
Jim's father said, "You can stay."
The Captain was a very silent man. All day long he sat in the parlor drinking rum, but at night he haunted Jim's nightmares.
Actually, let's let Jim tell the rest of the story.
OK. One day, said Jim, the Captain called me into his room and said, "Do you see this here penny piece boy?"
I said, "Yes sir I do."
Then he said, "I'll give you one of these every month if you keep your eyes open for a man with one leg."
The Captain seemed terrified of the one legged man, but no matter how long I looked for him, I saw the one legged man only in my nightmares.
Soon, my father became very ill. Our doctor, Doctor Livesly, came often to help him. Sometimes Doctor Livesly stayed for dinner. "Delicious meal, Mrs Hawkins," he would say.
One day Doctor Livesly asked me, "Doesn't that man frighten you?"
I said, "Yes sir."
Sunday, the captain came over to our table and said, "Silence there between decks!"
Doctor Livesly asked, "Were you speaking to me sir?"
The Captain said, "Aye, That I were San Pale--."
Doctor Livesly interupted and said, "Now you listen to me sir. If you keep on drinking rum, you will soon die. And perhaps that would not be a bad thing."
At that, the Captian drew his knife and said, "You take those words back!"
But the Doctor answered in a calm and steady voice and said, "Put that knife away, or I promise you that you will go to the gallows. I'm a judge sir, as well as a doctor, and if I hear even one complaint against you, I'll have you thrown into the gallows for many nights."
After that, the Captain was very good, but he stayed with us that long night as my poor father's heart grew worse and worse.
Then one January morning, another stranger came. The stranger asked, "Have you seen my mate Bill?"
I said, "I don't know your mate bill sir. We do have one guest that asked if we'd call him captain."
The stranger was pale and evil looking. Two fingers on his left hand were missing, but he wasn't the one legged man. In fact he didn't even seem like a sailor at all. Then he said, "I think your guest is Bill. I'll wait for him I will."
Then he made me hide behind the door with him.
When the Captian came back, the stranger reached out and grabbed the Captain. "Hello Bill," he said. "Remember your old shipmate? Have the boy fetch some rum, Bill, while you and I have a good honest talk."
I tried to listen from the next room. I could hear nothing for a long time, and then they began to shout and yell at eachother. I heard the Captain yell, "No, I'll never give it to you. I'd rather die." Then there was more shouting, followed by the sounds of swords.
Then Black Dog, the name of the stranger, ran out the door. I ran to the captian and asked, "Sir, are you okay?"
The captain did not answer but said, "Rum, Jim, fetch me Rum." Then he fell to the floor face first.
The Captain was dead.
Now Jim, stop. Tell us all the details.
Ok, ok, well the captain was killed. I went on a ship with some other men and a crew. The crew and the cook attacked us. But in the end we won. And the crook turned out to be my friend. The end
Ok, so that story was not by Walt Disney. But Walt Disney made the movie of it. And Walt Disney not only made the movie, but he made "Return to Treasure Island". And I'll bet he made "The Third Man on the Mountain".
Did anyone else see "Return to Treasure Island" (W)? It was a mini-series that was rerun occasionally on the Disney Channel back then. I was absolutely obsessed with it. I thought it was the greatest show ever. After watching it I would be pumped up for hours, pretending I was sword fighting in the backyard and singing the theme song to myself.
I was also obsessed with Treasure Island, a story I knew via the Fisher-Price delux comic book and tape set. I listened to it over and over again until I had it memorized, as you can see from the passage above. (I wrote that whole thing at school from memory). In fact even now as I re-read it, I can still hear the voice actors and the narration from the tape in my head. There's a bit of awkwardness in the retelling, since the version I had memorized in my head was all in the first person, and I attempted to re-write it in the 3rd person. Eventually I gave up and just and said, "let's let Jim tell the rest of the story." There were 5 other comic books and audio tapes in the series, and eventually our family collected them all (Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood). And all of them I pretty much listened to until I had them memorized.
(I guess there must not have been too much else to do back then. We were probably the last generation before kids just got overwhelmed with media and video games . We didn't get a nintendo until a few years later.
Plus I had parents who very closely limited my TV intake.)
These books (and similar "classics for children" series) both caused me to fall in love with the classics, and also kind of ruined them for me. Several times I tried to read the real "Treasure Island" book by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I could never get through it. When you have the whole story memorized, what's the point?
The same is true for all those other books. (Other than "Robinson Crusoe", which I read in a class at Calvin because I had to. And I found out that the real book is a lot more dry and boring than the comic book version would lead you to believe.)
I never did finish "The Third Man on the Mountain" story. Well, I will not tell that story now.
And remember the story about my family in China. Well, once all the children got out of the car, we killed the two men. The end.
Part 3 of this journal is all about my family. Kyle and Jessica are adopted from Korea. Kyle has a hole in his mouth, and he can not talk good. Jessica has only one arm and a half of an arm.
The whole family has a pen-pal from Korea. And I also have a penpal of my own.
I have sandy colored hair, and so does Kirstin. Jessica, Kyle and Dad have black hair. Mom has brown hair.
We have a dog. His name is Brandy. He acts like a watch dog. But really he is a Lhasa Apso. His fur is gray. It is my job to give him his food and water. He s a strange dog.
He is a strange Dog. He doesn't like mats or baskets. The only bones that he likes are milk bones doggy treats.
And he sits at the window barking at everybody for most of the day. If someone comes in, and it's someone he knows, he doesn't bark at them.
When he gets outside, he runs away a lot, but he always comes back. When he gets outside, he will chase joggers and bikers. Once he got away one the same day that Grandma Swagman was coming over. Grandma Swagman found him tied up to a lamp post. Some jogger or biker must have tied him up. I remember Kirstin was being a real brat at the time. Well, anyway, some jogger or biker had tied him up. When Grandma Swagman saw him, she untied him. Brandy did not bark because he knows Grandma Swagman.
You know, I never minded Brandy's barking all that much. Maybe because the dog was around before I was, I just grew up with it. Or maybe I was young enough that I could still tune it out. But it used to drive my parents crazy. Although a bit of internet research (W) reveals that the Lhasa Apso was specifically bred to for the purpose of barking at everything in sight.
You know, Brandy being a watch dog makes me remember a joke. Here it is:
Bob: Why is your dog running around like that?
Judy: He's a watch dog. He's winding himself up.
That's all the news about Brandy I know of. You all know about Grandma Swagman. She is the mother of my dad, by the way. But who was the mother of my mom? My other Grandma. Grandma Dik.
You know something about me? I am very good at creative writing. Here is one of my stories. It is called "The 3 Giraffes" by Joel Swagman.
Once upon a time there were three little giraffes.
The first giraffe built a home in a haystack.
The second giraffe built a home in a leaf pile.
The third giraffe built a home in a wood pile.
But little did they know a bunch of pirates were looking for giraffe soup....
My second grade teacher gave me an "O" for outstanding on creative writing. It was the only "O" I recieved on my report card. (Everything else was marked "S" for satisfactory.)
She also gave me a lot of praise for my stories, and even went through the trouble of signing me up for "Young Author's Festival at Calvin" the following year, even though I was no longer in her class.
I had never thought of myself as a writer before, but this put the idea into my mind. And in fact it was a notion that stayed with me for a long time, even when I got into high school and my English teachers there were a lot less enthusiastic about my writing abilities.
As a result of this, I developed the hobby of writing stories (mostly for my own amusement) all through my childhood, high school, and even my time at Calvin . (And although I'm somewhat embarrased to admit it, I still fool around with writing fiction from time to time even today.)
Like most amateur writers, I never worked constantly on anything as a child, but wrote in the usual fits and starts. I spent more time walking around day dreaming and thinking of ideas than I ever got around to writing on paper.
The "Three Giraffe Story" was originally a school assignment. But my teacher praised my story so highly that I became very proud of it. She asked me for permission to photocopy it so she could keep it in her files, and I was unbelievable proud of myself. For reasons I don't really remember, I decided I wanted to rewrite the whole thing down into my journal. I guess I just wanted to keep all my writing in the same place.
By the time I started re-copying my "Giraffe Story", the year was over and I was in 3rd grade. I worked on the table in the basement slowly rewriting everything, still in the phase were writing down anything was a laborious project.
The papers were left on the downstairs table for several nights, and eventually my mom just went through and threw everything out except the journal itself.
I was devestated and in tears. My mom agreed to call up my old second grade teacher, and she still had a copy of my story in her files which she recopied and gave back to me.
A few years ago I posted this story on one of my other blogs, so it seems unnecessary to re-post it here. Just click on the link if you're interested.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Beppu University: 100 Year Anniversary
This Thursday was the 100th Anniversary of Beppu University. Initially we were all told we would have the day off from school, which made us very happy. Then we were later told we would have to attend a special ceremony that day instead of school (at which attendance would be taken) for which we were not so happy.
A Korean friend complained to me. "I hate these Japanese ceremonies," he said. "They just go on and on with speeches. In Korea we try and wrap everything up in a half hour, but in Japan they just go on and on. The opening school ceremony was awful."
Actually I had missed the opening school ceremony, because it was on a Saturday and I had a conflict with work. But over the years I have attended more than my share of ceremonies in Japan, so I knew what he meant.
The day before the ceremony, the principle gave a short talk in which he told us what to wear (suits), where to go, and what time to show up. He mentioned the first hour would all be speeches, and then the rest of it would be a concert by Minami Kosetsu. "Of course you're all quite young, so I doubt any of you know who Minami Kosetsu is," he added.
...unless of course you have some sort of strange fascination with Japanese oldies like me. So I knew who Minami Kosetsu was. (In fact I mentioned him by name is this article). I even have a couple of his CDs in my apartment. (Well, if you want to get technical, they're actual mini disc copies I made. But the point is I'm a fan).
Minami Kosetsu was part of the folk music boom in Japan in the early 70s. He's also a native son of Oita prefecture, which is his connection to Beppu University.
And he put on a really good show. He played several songs I knew, and told lots of interesting stories between them. (My Nova students tell me that lots of talking is characteristic of his concerts). And even though he is an aging pop star, his voice still sounded as clear and as clean as it did on his old records. In fact even more so because it was a live performance.
The thing that was too bad was that it was a mandatory school event. So the auditorium was packed full of people who didn't really want to be there. And all around me there were people who would shift in their seats or groan whenever he started a new song. But many other people really got into it. Several of my classmates later said they had never heard of him before, but really enjoyed his music.
Link of the Day
The World at 350A Last Chance for Civilization By Bill McKibben
Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.
It’s not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.
There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
The rest.
A Korean friend complained to me. "I hate these Japanese ceremonies," he said. "They just go on and on with speeches. In Korea we try and wrap everything up in a half hour, but in Japan they just go on and on. The opening school ceremony was awful."
Actually I had missed the opening school ceremony, because it was on a Saturday and I had a conflict with work. But over the years I have attended more than my share of ceremonies in Japan, so I knew what he meant.
The day before the ceremony, the principle gave a short talk in which he told us what to wear (suits), where to go, and what time to show up. He mentioned the first hour would all be speeches, and then the rest of it would be a concert by Minami Kosetsu. "Of course you're all quite young, so I doubt any of you know who Minami Kosetsu is," he added.
...unless of course you have some sort of strange fascination with Japanese oldies like me. So I knew who Minami Kosetsu was. (In fact I mentioned him by name is this article). I even have a couple of his CDs in my apartment. (Well, if you want to get technical, they're actual mini disc copies I made. But the point is I'm a fan).
Minami Kosetsu was part of the folk music boom in Japan in the early 70s. He's also a native son of Oita prefecture, which is his connection to Beppu University.
And he put on a really good show. He played several songs I knew, and told lots of interesting stories between them. (My Nova students tell me that lots of talking is characteristic of his concerts). And even though he is an aging pop star, his voice still sounded as clear and as clean as it did on his old records. In fact even more so because it was a live performance.
The thing that was too bad was that it was a mandatory school event. So the auditorium was packed full of people who didn't really want to be there. And all around me there were people who would shift in their seats or groan whenever he started a new song. But many other people really got into it. Several of my classmates later said they had never heard of him before, but really enjoyed his music.
Link of the Day
The World at 350A Last Chance for Civilization By Bill McKibben
Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.
It’s not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.
All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.
There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.
The rest.
Friday, May 09, 2008
太陽の子エステバン / The Mysterious Cities of Gold
(Japanese Video Series)When I saw this Anime series in my local video store, I thought: what a great way to combine Japanese study with childhood nostalgia.
Remember this show? Of course you do. If you grew up in the 1980s, and if you lived in a house with basic cable, then I have no doubt this show has a special place in your heart.
And it turns out not only for Americans. I mentioned to my Australian co-worker that I was working my way through the series, and he said, "No kidding. I'm a member of the 'Mysterious Cities of Gold Webring'," (apparently such a thing exists) and then he proceeded to wax nostalgic about the series himself.
For anyone not familiar with this show:
It was a French / Japanese co-production. (My co-worker tried to tell me it was primarily a French project, so I couldn't really count it as Japanese anime. My own internet research leads me to believe it was mostly initiated by the Japanese side. I'm not going to waste a lot of space here on the debate though. Suffice it to say I'm counting it as a Japanese anime series for the purposes of this blog.)
It was then translated into English, and broadcast on Nickelodeon from 1986 to 1990. Which is where I, and many of you, saw it as a child.
In fact for much of my childhood I wasn't allowed to watch normal TV, and my viewing was restricted to just 3 channels: PBS, The Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon. So I used to watch this show a lot. And yet I never managed to make it all the way through to the end. I remember one summer when I had watched the show almost to its end, and then I was forbidden from watching TV for one week because I forgot to weed the garden. Another time I missed the conclusion because we had to all go pick my sister up from camp at Spring Hill, and I was given no choice about coming along for the afternoon.
(Also if memory serves correctly, this show used to be on at 2:30 in the afternoon. Which meant I couldn't watch it on a school day, and it was mostly a summer vacation show. But my memory grows hazy on this point. Does anyone else remember more clearly?)
Anyway, it was nice to sit down and watch the whole series on DVD from beginning to end. And of course watching it in the original Japanese helped me with my language studies.
For comparisons sake, I was just watching some of the English episodes on google video (there seem to be a lot of episodes floating around on the internet), and I realized how horrible the English dub actually was. This was something that never bothered me as a child, but I notice it now.
First off is the way all the dub voice actors are always rushing to finish their lines before the character's mouth finishes moving. For whatever reason, this seems to be a common problem when dubbing Japanese anime to English. (A phenomenon spoofed excellently on South Park).
That may be an unavoidable evil when dubbing from one language to another. What is less excusable is that the English voice actors seem to be sleepwalking their way through the performance. "Oh no. Oh let me go. Oh Esteban help me" (All spoken in a monotone).
Neither of these bothered me as a child. In fact I don't recall ever noticing it. But I notice it now.
So for voice acting, the Japanese version is far superior. Unfortunately the Japanese sound track is a big disappointment.
Remember the theme song from "Cities of Gold"? It had a mysterious feel to it, which really set the mood for the show.
Granted I was easier to impress back then, but go over to youtube and watch the opening sequence again. It still sounds pretty cool. And the French version is pretty much the same.
....And then, watch the Japanese opening theme. I'm a big fan of Japanese music, but the J-pop scene has more than it's share of cheesy pop ballads, and this is a prime example.
The series consists of 39 episodes. (Apparently 39 being the magic number needed to accommodate the Japan Broadcasting Corporation airing schedule during a year).
39 episodes is a lot to sit through when you're trying to watch them all on DVD. (Especially with school starting up , it took me about 3 months to work my way through this series). And yet at the same time, part of me was surprised there weren't more episodes. After all, 39 episodes is nothing really, considering Nickelodeon aired this show 5 days a week for 4 years. They must have run through the whole series every 2 months, and rerun the whole a thing a total of (...hold on a minute here...) 24 times in total.
But somehow it seemed a lot longer back then. If I missed the ending episode, it would seem like an eternity before the series would cycle around again to the conclusions (I would have guessed about half a year). I guess time really does pass slower when you're a child.
Anyway, I've gassed on long enough. I suppose I should finally get around to reviewing the actual content of this series.
This cartoon is clearly not adult entertainment for any number of reasons:
*the slapstick cartoonish humor is aimed straight at a child's sensibilities (as well as the buffoonery of the comic relief characters Sancho and Pedro) ,
* the action sequences take a lot of liberties with the laws of physics,
* the whole premise of the show requires a suspension of disbelief on a level more readily achieved by a child ,
* the adults defer to the decisions of the children in a way that only happens in children's cartoons,
et cetera.
So it's no good watching this show from the perspective of an adult. However, if you can try and watch this show from the perspective of a 10 year old child, it has aged surprisingly well. Especially compared to all the other junk we used to watch during the 80s.
Have you ever tried re-watching 80s cartoons as an adult? Superfriends, He-man, Thundercats, all the stuff we used to love back then is hard to sit through now. (When I was living back in the states 2 years ago, I was overjoyed when I discovered the cartoon network was re-running Superfriends, only to discover I couldn't even make it through a whole episode).
"Cities of Gold" on the other hand, was an absolute pleasure to re-watch. Sure I had to work hard to suspend my adult reasoning at several points throughout the series, but the story is well written, and a sense of exotic adventure pervades the whole series. Whether you're navigating the straits of Magellan, shipwrecked on the Galapagos Islands, in the jungles of South America, in the forests of the Amazon women, or deep in the caves of the Olmec's, you have a sense of being on a classic adventure in the tradition of the best pulp fiction writers. Burroughs would have been proud.
When I was a child, I had read in the school library about the real life historical Spanish quest for the cities of gold. At the time, that was yet another attraction to this series, as it gave it a real historical connection.
Watching it now, the historical connection seems very loose indeed. Especially once the series turns to science fiction and fantasy and blatantly abandons any pretense what so ever of historical accuracy. Still, it was a stroke of genius for someone to turn this ancient Spanish myth into a children's cartoon. The whole series has an air of ancient mystery to it.
The characters are surprisingly complex as well, by the standards of children's cartoons. Mendoza is the action swashbuckling action hero of the series. If one of the children gets in trouble, you can bet it will be Mendoza who swings in on a rope (with the dramatic music and his cape fluttering behind him) to save the day. In any other series, Mendoza would have been the title character of the show; like "He-man" or "Superman", or any other 80s cartoon, where the strongest and bravest character is also not only the lead character but also the moral strong point. (Didn't He-man even give moral lessons at the end of each episode?)
But in "Cities of Gold" you're never quite sure until the very end where Mendoza stands. You know part of him wants to protect the children, but another part of him just might sell them out for the gold if he ever got the chance. And the children, especially Zia, never fully trust Mendoza for most of the series.
And of course there's the whole concept (completely new to all of us 80s children) that this was an on-going story. Not everything was wrapped up and finished in 25 minutes, and then completely restarted the next day. The story developed, and the characters and their relationships also developed with it.
Finally, despite the fact that this series was produced in the early 80s, the animation has also aged very well. None of the cheap stop motion techniques you might expect from cartoons of this period. It could hold it's own against anything on TV today.
In conclusion: watching this video series straight through was a very pleasant trip down memory lane. It might have been a children's cartoon, but I never thought to myself, "how could I have liked this crap as a child?" Instead the thought that constantly went through my head while watching was, "No wonder I loved this show as a child. It's the perfect show for an 8 year old boy."
And plus I finally found out how the series ended!
According to wikipedia, a film based on this series is currently in production. If true, I'll be looking forward to seeing that when it comes out.
Link of the Day
Enough
The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Anime Series Review (Scripted)
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Japan E-mails: September 3, 2001: Book Reviews
To: Bob (Media Mouse)
Bob, here are a few reviews for you as promised. I think I have a couple more in me that I'm not thinking of right now, but I'll send them along as I think of them. You'll notice that:
1) All of my reviews are novels. However I think as we develop our book review section could comprise a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction
2) I'm kind of hogging the classics a bit, and someone else on Media Mouse (or connected to Media Mouse) could probably write a better review of several of these books. But, I think it might even be cool to include more than one review on a given book if more than one person is interested in reviewing it. That way we could get different takes on stuff. These are just my takes.
3) I hope it's not too much trouble to copy--paste out of hotmail. I'm not good at using attachments. If it is too much trouble, just let me know, and I'll figure this attachment thing out. Peace.
Author: Victor Hugo
Book: Les Miserables
Victor Hugo's classic, "Les Miserables" has become so popular in mainstream society that it may seem strange to claim this book as a piece of radical literature. And in truth there is little in it that is radical by today's standards. Although Victor Hugo did deal with themes of political rebellion in this classic, religious ideas and the theme of redemption are more dominant in the work.
Nevertheless, the book is not without political relevance. Victor Hugo, who himself became a nominal socialist in old age, was no stranger to the political world. He was expelled from France after resisting Napoleon III's coup d'etat, and wrote "Les Miserables" in exile.
Anarchist-feminist Louise Michel, arguable the most famous figure associated with the Paris Commune, considered Victor Hugo her childhood hero. She referred to herself as Enjolas, after the fictional leader at the barricades from "Les Miserables" and she was even sexually involved with Victor Hugo when he returned to Paris.
Victor Hugo himself was not involved in the Paris Commune, but earned the anger of the conservative bourgeois by pleading for leniency once the Commune fell. It was because of this stance that an angry mob smashed the windows of his house one night shouting "down with Jean Valjean" (again, another reference to a fictional character from "Les Miserables", this time the protagonist).
Through the fictional ABC club in "Les Miserables" Victor Hugo offers a glimpse into the world of the Paris radicals of 1832. Granted this was in a time when republican ideals by themselves were enough to be considered radical, but there are references to other causes. For instance, one of the revolutionaries is obsessed with the idea of freedom for the Polish people, even though he is not Polish himself. This is a reflection of a time when Justice for the Polish people was the darling cause of European radicals. Mikhail Bakunin himself, when he was first becoming involved in politics, was swept into this cause and gave speeches to the Polish exile community.
Many would be readers are intimidated by the length of Les Miserables. However, large sections of the book have no relevance to the plot, and can safely be skimmed over, making the book not as long as it seems. Many readers are happy with an abridged version of Les Miserables. However many, like myself, can never read an abridged book without an uncomfortable feeling that they might be missing something important. For this reason I recommend investing in an unbridged copy, and simply skimming over the irrelevant parts. This allows the reader to be the editor, instead of having the publisher decide which portions of the book are worthwhile.
Besides which, some of the tangents Victor Hugo goes off on might actually be worth reading, such as the passages describing the problem of inequality in Paris. On the other hand, the long passages he uses to describe some of the architecture can probably be painlessly skipped over. The reader should just use their own discretion.
Finally, this review would probably not be complete without some mention of the various sequels to "Les Miserables" floating around. The most widely circulated one is probably "Cosette" by Laura Kalpakian. The book deals with the surviving characters from "Les Miserables" as participate in the 1848 revolution and live through the following coup by Napoleon the III, and the repression of radicals that followed. No doubt the period covered is a fascinating time in French History, but Kalpakian pales in comparison with Victor Hugo. The attempt to recapture the drama of the original "Les Miserables" results in a somewhat cheesy and melodramatic storyline. Nonetheless as there appears to be a shortage of English historical novels covering this period, I suggest anyone interested in this period might do well to at least try out "Cosette", but keep your expectations low.
Author: Tom Wolfe
Books: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic, Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher,
I apologize first of all for including in this radical book review section an author who by his own admission is a conservative. However, while one might disagree with Tom Wolfe on ideological points, one has to admit he does a good job of painting a vivid picture of his subject matter.
The three works I have read by Tom Wolfe, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", "Radical Chic" and "Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher" (the last two are quite short and usually included in one volume) all deal with the New Left movement of the late 1960s. However Wolfe's books are not love letters to the radicals, as he pokes subtle fun at the New Left participants throughout. Nevertheless, Wolfe's descriptions of the events he describes are so detailed and so vivid that I recommend his books to anyone interested in this time period, provided on reads with a critical mind.
And one could even argue Wolfe makes some good points in his criticisms; for example, when he pokes fun at government bureaucracy and wealthy liberals who enjoy the prestige of hanging out with the Black Panthers. However it should be noted that Wolfe always chooses easy targets for his barbs.
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" is about Ken Kesey (author of "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest") who travels around with his band of Merry Pranksters, and experiments with LSD. Most of the book is more cultural in nature than political, but there are interesting sections about the uneasy alliance between the hedonistic minded counter-culture and the politically minded New Left.
"Radical Chic" is a description of a party hosted by Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panthers. It is an interesting commentary on rich liberals who, Wolfe believes, are into radical politics because of the image, and not because of conviction. The primary focus of Wolfe's satire are the rich liberals, but he manages to take a few jabs at the Black Panthers as well. However, because of the detail in which Wolfe describes the event, this book should be read by anyone interested in the Black Panthers, provided this is not used as the only source on the Black Panthers.
And "Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher" is about organized militant minority groups, and the strategies they use to try and manipulate government bureaucracy. Again, some of what Wolfe says should be taken with a grain of salt, but I enjoyed this book the most out of the three, and often found myself laughing at Wolfe's satire.
Author: George Orwell
Books: 1984, Animal Farm, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Because he is primarily known as an anti-communist, George Orwell was the darling of the political right all through the Cold War. However, while George Orwell was appalled by Stalinist style communism, he never gave up on democratic socialists ideas, and for this reason he has also been popular in anarchist circles.
His two most famous books, "1984" and "Animal Farm" both deal with thinly veiled allegories to the Soviet Union. However most of the criticism made in these books could be applied to any type of totalitarian government. Orwell also criticizes, through satire, those citizens who are uncritical of what the government tells them to believe.
"1984" is truly brilliant, not only for the political content involved, but Orwell has a writing style that makes him a joy to read. The book explores the nature of totalitarian states, and how they maintain their power. Although all of this is described in an exaggerated fictional context, the general points Orwell makes are sound. Orwell also describes how people react to totalitarian states, whether they comply, seek their own personal liberation, or seek to destroy the entire system. Orwell gives examples of all three reactions through his characters.
"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is one of Orwell's lesser known works, but it is not without value. It is the story of Gordon, a man who had success in the advertising industry. However Gordon becomes so appalled by capitalism, and his contribution to it, that he decides to drop out of the whole system and work in a bookshop. The book describes Gordon's struggle to live a happy life in his self-imposed poverty. Although it is always dangerous to assume autobiographical content, much of this book parallels Orwell's own life when he was working in similar circumstances. The book describes a struggle many of us face in different circumstances: How much of our principles are we willing to compromise in order to live in mainstream capitalist society, or should we live out our lives on the outskirts of society? Orwell's ending may be inconclusive, but the question cannot be ignored.
Author: Richard Wright
Book: Black Boy
Richard Wright is certainly a master of English prose, and his books are a pleasure to read no matter what the subject matter is. Therefore when he writes about an interesting subject, it is all the more reason to check out his writings.
"Black Boy" is Richard Wright's autobiography, and is divided into two parts. The first part concerns Richard Wright growing up as an African American in the South during the first part of the 20th Century. This makes for excellent in itself, but the second part of the book is more noteworthy from a radical perspective.
In the second part, Wright moves to Chicago in the 1930s. It is there that he encounters the Communist party. Wright is impressed with the communist party's dedication to the cause of civil rights for African Americans, and so enlists. It is, for the most part, a very sympathetic portrait of the Communist party, even though at the end of the book Wright leaves the Communist party thoroughly frustrated. As Wright becomes more involved in the Communist part, he realizes how authoritarian the party is, and how there is no room for dispute within the party itself. In short, the book captures both the good and bad points of the Communist party: the dedication for equality is mentioned right alongside of the authoritarian structure.
[Editor's note: Unfortunately none of these reviews ever saw the light of day on Media Mouse's web-page. I never heard back after sending them over, so I'm not sure what happened.
Most of the things we had discussed for the Media Mouse web page at that time never happened, so I suspect the web master just got either burnt out or distracted by other projects. No doubt the fact that September 11th happened a few days after this e-mail was a factor in most of our old projects fading away, and a change of focus.
A few years later, however, Media Mouse did start up a book-review project on their site. It was clear from the wonkish style of books being reviewed that they were interested in books with detailed policy analysis, not just novels by writers with vague left-leaning sentiments (as I had sent them).
Nevertheless, despite the fact that these reviews never saw the light of day, I have, over -the past- few - years-, gotten several other book reviews published on their webpage. ]
Bob, here are a few reviews for you as promised. I think I have a couple more in me that I'm not thinking of right now, but I'll send them along as I think of them. You'll notice that:
1) All of my reviews are novels. However I think as we develop our book review section could comprise a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction
2) I'm kind of hogging the classics a bit, and someone else on Media Mouse (or connected to Media Mouse) could probably write a better review of several of these books. But, I think it might even be cool to include more than one review on a given book if more than one person is interested in reviewing it. That way we could get different takes on stuff. These are just my takes.
3) I hope it's not too much trouble to copy--paste out of hotmail. I'm not good at using attachments. If it is too much trouble, just let me know, and I'll figure this attachment thing out. Peace.
Author: Victor Hugo
Book: Les Miserables
Victor Hugo's classic, "Les Miserables" has become so popular in mainstream society that it may seem strange to claim this book as a piece of radical literature. And in truth there is little in it that is radical by today's standards. Although Victor Hugo did deal with themes of political rebellion in this classic, religious ideas and the theme of redemption are more dominant in the work.
Nevertheless, the book is not without political relevance. Victor Hugo, who himself became a nominal socialist in old age, was no stranger to the political world. He was expelled from France after resisting Napoleon III's coup d'etat, and wrote "Les Miserables" in exile.
Anarchist-feminist Louise Michel, arguable the most famous figure associated with the Paris Commune, considered Victor Hugo her childhood hero. She referred to herself as Enjolas, after the fictional leader at the barricades from "Les Miserables" and she was even sexually involved with Victor Hugo when he returned to Paris.
Victor Hugo himself was not involved in the Paris Commune, but earned the anger of the conservative bourgeois by pleading for leniency once the Commune fell. It was because of this stance that an angry mob smashed the windows of his house one night shouting "down with Jean Valjean" (again, another reference to a fictional character from "Les Miserables", this time the protagonist).
Through the fictional ABC club in "Les Miserables" Victor Hugo offers a glimpse into the world of the Paris radicals of 1832. Granted this was in a time when republican ideals by themselves were enough to be considered radical, but there are references to other causes. For instance, one of the revolutionaries is obsessed with the idea of freedom for the Polish people, even though he is not Polish himself. This is a reflection of a time when Justice for the Polish people was the darling cause of European radicals. Mikhail Bakunin himself, when he was first becoming involved in politics, was swept into this cause and gave speeches to the Polish exile community.
Many would be readers are intimidated by the length of Les Miserables. However, large sections of the book have no relevance to the plot, and can safely be skimmed over, making the book not as long as it seems. Many readers are happy with an abridged version of Les Miserables. However many, like myself, can never read an abridged book without an uncomfortable feeling that they might be missing something important. For this reason I recommend investing in an unbridged copy, and simply skimming over the irrelevant parts. This allows the reader to be the editor, instead of having the publisher decide which portions of the book are worthwhile.
Besides which, some of the tangents Victor Hugo goes off on might actually be worth reading, such as the passages describing the problem of inequality in Paris. On the other hand, the long passages he uses to describe some of the architecture can probably be painlessly skipped over. The reader should just use their own discretion.
Finally, this review would probably not be complete without some mention of the various sequels to "Les Miserables" floating around. The most widely circulated one is probably "Cosette" by Laura Kalpakian. The book deals with the surviving characters from "Les Miserables" as participate in the 1848 revolution and live through the following coup by Napoleon the III, and the repression of radicals that followed. No doubt the period covered is a fascinating time in French History, but Kalpakian pales in comparison with Victor Hugo. The attempt to recapture the drama of the original "Les Miserables" results in a somewhat cheesy and melodramatic storyline. Nonetheless as there appears to be a shortage of English historical novels covering this period, I suggest anyone interested in this period might do well to at least try out "Cosette", but keep your expectations low.
Author: Tom Wolfe
Books: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic, Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher,
I apologize first of all for including in this radical book review section an author who by his own admission is a conservative. However, while one might disagree with Tom Wolfe on ideological points, one has to admit he does a good job of painting a vivid picture of his subject matter.
The three works I have read by Tom Wolfe, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", "Radical Chic" and "Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher" (the last two are quite short and usually included in one volume) all deal with the New Left movement of the late 1960s. However Wolfe's books are not love letters to the radicals, as he pokes subtle fun at the New Left participants throughout. Nevertheless, Wolfe's descriptions of the events he describes are so detailed and so vivid that I recommend his books to anyone interested in this time period, provided on reads with a critical mind.
And one could even argue Wolfe makes some good points in his criticisms; for example, when he pokes fun at government bureaucracy and wealthy liberals who enjoy the prestige of hanging out with the Black Panthers. However it should be noted that Wolfe always chooses easy targets for his barbs.
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" is about Ken Kesey (author of "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest") who travels around with his band of Merry Pranksters, and experiments with LSD. Most of the book is more cultural in nature than political, but there are interesting sections about the uneasy alliance between the hedonistic minded counter-culture and the politically minded New Left.
"Radical Chic" is a description of a party hosted by Leonard Bernstein to raise money for the Black Panthers. It is an interesting commentary on rich liberals who, Wolfe believes, are into radical politics because of the image, and not because of conviction. The primary focus of Wolfe's satire are the rich liberals, but he manages to take a few jabs at the Black Panthers as well. However, because of the detail in which Wolfe describes the event, this book should be read by anyone interested in the Black Panthers, provided this is not used as the only source on the Black Panthers.
And "Mau Mauing the Flack Catcher" is about organized militant minority groups, and the strategies they use to try and manipulate government bureaucracy. Again, some of what Wolfe says should be taken with a grain of salt, but I enjoyed this book the most out of the three, and often found myself laughing at Wolfe's satire.
Author: George Orwell
Books: 1984, Animal Farm, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Because he is primarily known as an anti-communist, George Orwell was the darling of the political right all through the Cold War. However, while George Orwell was appalled by Stalinist style communism, he never gave up on democratic socialists ideas, and for this reason he has also been popular in anarchist circles.
His two most famous books, "1984" and "Animal Farm" both deal with thinly veiled allegories to the Soviet Union. However most of the criticism made in these books could be applied to any type of totalitarian government. Orwell also criticizes, through satire, those citizens who are uncritical of what the government tells them to believe.
"1984" is truly brilliant, not only for the political content involved, but Orwell has a writing style that makes him a joy to read. The book explores the nature of totalitarian states, and how they maintain their power. Although all of this is described in an exaggerated fictional context, the general points Orwell makes are sound. Orwell also describes how people react to totalitarian states, whether they comply, seek their own personal liberation, or seek to destroy the entire system. Orwell gives examples of all three reactions through his characters.
"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is one of Orwell's lesser known works, but it is not without value. It is the story of Gordon, a man who had success in the advertising industry. However Gordon becomes so appalled by capitalism, and his contribution to it, that he decides to drop out of the whole system and work in a bookshop. The book describes Gordon's struggle to live a happy life in his self-imposed poverty. Although it is always dangerous to assume autobiographical content, much of this book parallels Orwell's own life when he was working in similar circumstances. The book describes a struggle many of us face in different circumstances: How much of our principles are we willing to compromise in order to live in mainstream capitalist society, or should we live out our lives on the outskirts of society? Orwell's ending may be inconclusive, but the question cannot be ignored.
Author: Richard Wright
Book: Black Boy
Richard Wright is certainly a master of English prose, and his books are a pleasure to read no matter what the subject matter is. Therefore when he writes about an interesting subject, it is all the more reason to check out his writings.
"Black Boy" is Richard Wright's autobiography, and is divided into two parts. The first part concerns Richard Wright growing up as an African American in the South during the first part of the 20th Century. This makes for excellent in itself, but the second part of the book is more noteworthy from a radical perspective.
In the second part, Wright moves to Chicago in the 1930s. It is there that he encounters the Communist party. Wright is impressed with the communist party's dedication to the cause of civil rights for African Americans, and so enlists. It is, for the most part, a very sympathetic portrait of the Communist party, even though at the end of the book Wright leaves the Communist party thoroughly frustrated. As Wright becomes more involved in the Communist part, he realizes how authoritarian the party is, and how there is no room for dispute within the party itself. In short, the book captures both the good and bad points of the Communist party: the dedication for equality is mentioned right alongside of the authoritarian structure.
[Editor's note: Unfortunately none of these reviews ever saw the light of day on Media Mouse's web-page. I never heard back after sending them over, so I'm not sure what happened.
Most of the things we had discussed for the Media Mouse web page at that time never happened, so I suspect the web master just got either burnt out or distracted by other projects. No doubt the fact that September 11th happened a few days after this e-mail was a factor in most of our old projects fading away, and a change of focus.
A few years later, however, Media Mouse did start up a book-review project on their site. It was clear from the wonkish style of books being reviewed that they were interested in books with detailed policy analysis, not just novels by writers with vague left-leaning sentiments (as I had sent them).
Nevertheless, despite the fact that these reviews never saw the light of day, I have, over -the past- few - years-, gotten several other book reviews published on their webpage. ]