WhirledView

December 31

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Only
the smaller
foil-wrapped 
Santas
are made of chocolate
through and through.
The big ones are hollow inside.
Equestrian bronzes are also built
on a void—impressive
but empty,
like pledges of total reform
on the cusp of every New Year. Oh yes! 
I’ll be a slimmer, richer, more loved,
much happier person this year
than last.

Tied to cycles,
watching heat follow cold
and galaxies revolving
and generations reenacting parents’ triumphs
and mistakes, we so seldom pause
to note that big C change
is rare. And this life of mine,
for all its blanks
concerning how
and when
finis will come,
is fairly set. I am
who I am. Nothing I do
will make me smarter by much
or funnier or most sought after
or classically beautiful,
and, really, I’ve zero desire
to reject the fundamental me,
which isn’t twisted or lazy or cruel
or gnawed with envy
of those who’ll lavishly party
this dying year into history.
The principle of bigness
applies here, too: after tonight’s
grandiose or more modest affair,
horrible headaches
and mountains of empties
and dismal visions of puffed up lives
like celebratory balloons always in danger
of popping.

Yet we are,
willynilly,
alive,
and I, for one,
have found joy enough
to neuter the bleakness that crashes in
and overwhelms, for long spells,
what’s good and thoughtful and generous,
meaning I, too,
might have been better
and can be, perhaps. 
So these lapses I would cite—and pledge,
not as vast ambitions or feats demanding leaps
over chasms of improbability,
given the past of the species and my own,
but simply as freshened intent
toward greater kindness,
modest acts of amelioration,
humane errands
actually run.

Imagine
a cairn by a high snowy pass,
a pile of many insignificant stones,
stones ready to hand and easy to heft,
stones heaped up by people we’ll never know,
stones signing the way to safety
and warmth. 

 

A Classy American Show in New Shanghai

By Patricia H. Kushlis

When I was in China in October, I attended a performance by the Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem Alumnae Ensemble.  The concert took place at the Shanghai Concert Hall as a part of the 11^th Annual Shanghai International Arts Festival.  The program combined, in the tradition of its predecessor - The Boys Choir of Harlem - classical, Broadway, gospel, jazz and rock.  It was a classy show and lots of fun. The concert began with a traditional Chinese song and ended with Chinese and American national anthems. (Shanghai concert cover photo from Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem Alumnae Ensemble website.)

Not Your Normal Alumnae Group

The good news is that the all but defunct Boys Choir of Harlem which entertained American presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton lives on. Under the direction of Terrance Wright, a 39 year old Boys Choir alumnus who radiates enthusiasm and directing skill, the resurrected choir has become an updated and older version of its former self. Women from the Girls Choir of Harlem founded in 1988 sing the parts that the young soprano boys once did. And, of course, another difference: these choir members are all adults.

From Mozart to Broadway and Beyond

The new, old choir is as much at home singing Mozart as strutting-its-stuff to Broadway melodies.  This is a thoroughly professional group of various ages, shapes and voices even though most, if not all, members likely took time off from their day jobs to make the group’s first international trip. (Photo right:  final bows, Shanghai by Patricia H. Kushlis Oct. 2009).

If this were the Soviet Union when the US government had funds to send its top performing arts groups to Moscow, Leningrad and beyond, it is quite likely that such a trip would have not only had the imprimatur of the State Department or the US Information Agency but also been financed and arranged by it. 

Patching the Travel Money Together

To Wish You A Very Glitzy and Merry Christmas

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Days before I left Singapore on November 12, the Christmas decorations were already up and lit.  The lower level of the Ngee Ann City shopping complex on Orchard Road had turned into a Christmas Markt – sans the real snow and freezing temperatures of its far older European counterparts.  Meanwhile, a towering, larger than life Christmas tree greeted shoppers and gawkers in the Mall’s  lobby. 

But what stood out even more was the lighted neon greeting strung across North Bridge Road wishing everyone a “glitzy Christmas.” This blazing banner stretched from Raffles City to the outdoor shopping arcade attached – but separate from the Raffles Hotel – Singapore’s most venerable landmark.  The only thing that stood between me and an otherwise unobstructed view of the “glitzy” greeting was the palm tree on the sidewalk – but I couldn’t very well dash into a busy street at night to photograph the sign and expect to live to tell the story.

I still find it hard to envision Christmas in the tropical heat and humidity that engulfs a city near the equator – but there it is.  After all, Jesus was not exactly born in snowy climes. His birth was celebrated with frankincense and myrrh amidst the palms - not hot mulled cider, Irish coffee or eggnog beside a fire – and the three Magi, so the story goes, arrived on camels not reindeer or accompanying Santa in his sleigh.

 So what’s wrong with wishing everyone a Glitzy Christmas in Southeast Asia’s glitziest shopping Mecca just because most Singaporeans aren’t Christians?  Who said Christmas can’t be for everyone: Certainly not the merchants.  Besides there are churches as well as mosques and Buddhist and Hindu temples in this port city of predominantly Buddhists (42.5%) even though no religion can claim to be a majority.   

Christmas in Manila

When we lived in Manila, a very Christian country except for three restive Muslim provinces in the south, Christmas lights and decorations festooned Makati – the main commercial center – beginning in October.  By the time Christmas rolled around, the monsoon season’s hot and sticky heat had given way to the “cool and dry season” – by far the most pleasant time of year.

For me, the best parts of a Manila Christmas were the concerts that took place in the lobbies of major Makati hotels performed by world class choruses from the city’s top universities.  If there’s one thing Filipinos do well, it’s performance in the western musical tradition and Christmas carols are as much a part of their repertoire as lounge music, jazz and rock.

Back to a Rocky Mountain Christmas

This year, however, it's back to the snowy, but hopefully sunny weather of the southern Rockies.  I will celebrate the holiday with extended family in northern New Mexico.  And yes, there is snow on the ground and ice in the driveway.  We’ll take the Farelito Walk along Santa Fe's Canyon Road on Christmas Eve, attend a concert by the Desert Chorale at the Basilica a couple of days earlier, ski, eat and just enjoy the holiday at one of America’s top tourist destinations. 

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you and yours “A Very Merry Glitzy Christmas” wherever you may be.

Photos of Singapore's Nge Ann City's Christmas tree and Glitzy Christmas greeting by PHKushlis, November 2009;  Photo of the Santa Fe Plaza and Basilica by PHKushlis December 2007.      

A Normal So-so Christmas Coming Up

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

There’d been highly hyped hopes for a couple of really cool gifts for Christmas this year, and I don’t include the snowstorm that roared up the East coast a couple of days ago. 

The global warming conclave in Copenhagen was supposed to feature a chorus of angels promising salvation for everyone, salvation in the form of strict agreed-upon goals—goals that would be enforceable.  Well, at the very least the goals would be measurable, so that failures to deliver on schedule would be as obvious as an airport ETA sign announcing “on time,” “delayed” or canceled.   I couldn’t buy either expectation.  So far as that unrealistic transparency goal was concerned, who’d be able to ferret out the inevitable fudging?  Worse, how would the international community manage to punish China or the US or any other country for not performing as promised? All in all, the belief that the species would be inspired to act harmoniously and altruistically seemed pretty unrealistic from the get go.

The other great gift for Americans was to be bipartisan health care reform, meaning broadly-backed coverage for every American at a cost the country can bear.  Well, it looks as if the Senate Democrats will actually pass a bill on Christmas eve (talk about Christmas presents!), but can you say sausage factory?  Who knows what’s in the package—and as for the process, it’s hardly what we want to promote as democracy abroad. 

Waiting for a Savior

In both cases, there was always the rather pathetic hope for a messiah, a mahdi, a deus ex machina, a superman, whose charisma or moral force or sheer power would deliver the goods–unanimity on the route to salvation, transparency, enforceability.  Barack Obama, it was hoped, would amply fill that role in Copenhagen as in Washington.  But alas!  Obama hasn’t transformed American politics, and no one human being could have created the extraordinary unity that the prospect of retarding global warming seems to require.  Never in the evolution of the murderous human species has there been the sweetly cooperative “we” that’s needed now. 

Nor has commonality been the theme du jour over these past decades.  It’s been multi-culturalism.  We must respect and preserve, unaltered, all human cultures in all aspects of their contrary contradictory glory.  Yet now, suddenly, we’re expected to shed our sacrosanct cultural ego complexes in this great global push for the common good.  We’re not so distinct, it seems.  We’re all the same.  Well, we all breathe oxygen and exhale CO2; we can’t drink salt water; we need food and a certain temperature range.  So we've gotta save the planet—meaning, of course, those planetary conditions that support human life.

From 1959 to1989 -The Polish Canary in the Mineshaft

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Six months ago, the US celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate that took place in the model kitchen of America’s first National Exhibit in the Soviet Union. On November 9, 1989 - thirty years and a few months later - a different but even more momentous event happened in US-Soviet relations: the fall of the Berlin Wall that signaled the unraveling of the Soviet empire in Europe to be followed two years later by the demise of the Soviet Union itself.

That unraveling spread like wildfire in the night from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. By December 1989, revolution had spread south to Romania where the northern peaceful protests had turned violent as they approached the Black Sea. The increasingly bizarre, repressive and out of touch Communist regime of Nicholae Ceaucescu used Romanian security forces to fire upon demonstrators.

Nevertheless, the peaceful protests grew. And the Romanians learned of the events happening in their own country through Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and BBC.

On Christmas Day, the Ceaucescus – Nicholae and his wife Elena - were forced to flee their cozy comfortable Bucharest palace. Joining the popular uprising, the military turned against the couple too and they were unable to flee the country. The Ceaucescus were tried, sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed by military firing squad that same day.

Back to 1959

In an article entitled “The 1959 Kitchen Debate (or how cultural exchanges changed the Soviet Union)” by Yale Richmond in the 2009 July/August issue of Russian Life, Richmond not only describes Nixon’s tense and testy reception in Moscow that July 1959 day a half century ago and his ten-day whirlwind tour of the Soviet Union thereafter.

But he also described a much more pleasant as well as strategically important experience that has all but been lost in time. Namely, Nixon’s three days stop-over in Warsaw en route back to the US where he focused on “US relations with Poland and other Eastern European communist countries” all the while feted by the Poles.

Nixon in Warsaw: the lesser known story

Buddha and Gaia say, “Buy! Buy! Buy!”

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Copenhagen this month has been the scene of an all too familiar drama, a clash between elites in the meeting hall and activists in the street.  Often the substance of such dramas has to do with international trade.  In this case, it’s global warming—how to slow it down and put off the awful day when the rivers run dry and the oceans take over. Even if meaningful measures can be agreed on in Copenhagen, the likelihood that enough people will be willing to  make the costly changes in lifestyle that might actually decelerate the global warming trend is fairly slim.  The preferred course of action is already evident.  Find any and every excuse to shove the sacrifice onto designated culprits.

Over the years, in fact, even in America, there have been many efforts to jump start a lifestyle with a lighter footprint on the planet. Often they combine ecological science with plain old nature loving and/or various sorts of philosophy/religion/spiritualism.  They gain some ardent devotees, but they generally get diluted or subverted by the dominant culture, which is aggressively materialistic.  Gaia is one such route.  Buddhism is another.

I can’t say I’ve read the short, medium long and miscellaneous sutras from beginning to end, but it’s pretty clear that the absolutely most basic Buddhist idea is to make yourself less miserable by hanging on to less—and by getting a good grip on why you cling to anything or anyone at all, especially since nothing will last.  Nothing.  Well, maybe diamonds really are forever.  But that’ll be pretty cold comfort when global warming’s done its damage.  Meanwhile, nothing that matters—like life, like love—comes with a money back guarantee either.

A related philosophy has to do with taking care of the terrestrial organism by emphasizing sustainability: use less, don’t pollute, recycle what you must use.  It’s based on James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis which posits a homeostatic biosphere, but Gaia is more popular as an earth goddess who will take care of us if we take care of her.

A Matter of Competency

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Last  July Nick Kralev, The Washington Times  State Department correspondent reported on the status of Ambassadorial appointments since the beginning of the Obama administration.  He described the American Foreign Service Association’s (AFSA) unhappiness with the ratio of political appointees to career officers and AFSA’s fears that the percentages – then 26% political appointees with 11% yet to be named – would tip even further in favor of the non-career officers.  AFSA keeps a tally – so just check out its website for the most recent figures.  They’re not exactly pretty.

 This is not a new problem and not much has changed since the summer.  Unfortunately, administration after administration regardless of political party seems to think that “cushy” Ambassadorial positions complete with free house, staff, car and driver are fit payment for campaign fundraising support – often as paybacks for “bundling money.”

Cushy Paybacks Should Also Rest on Skills Appropriate for the Position

 What they conveniently forget is that most campaign fundraisers do not have the skills or the background to manage embassies or represent US foreign policies abroad.   This may not be a problem in certain countries like Canada where – if the appointee really does have the ear of the White House – that kind of access is, I’m told, the single most important qualification.  But from what I saw when I was working abroad, too many political Ambassadors did not have the appropriate White House numbers on their Blackberries or Rolodexes and as likely as not they also had no requisite diplomatic skills that neared those of a trained professional.

A Few Qualifications Please

Where are the Steeples of Riyadh?

Patricia Lee Sharpe

The news story that voters, by a bare majority, have banned construction of new minarets  in Switzerland seems to have very strong legs.  Western liberals are appalled at the bigotry.  Muslims generally are taking offense. My first impulse, as one of those liberals, was to produce a satire, which I’ll stand by, but I’d like to pursue the matter more directly here.

Heated Rhetoric

Already the web abounds with vehement postings claiming that Christians are free to build houses of worship in various Muslim countries, with or without steeples, with or without permission to ring bells.  There are equally strident pieces to the contrary.  One thing should be clear. Bigotry in one country does not justify bigotry in return—and yet, religious sentiments and human emotions being what they are, tit-for-tat practices are bound to be advocated.

Most Muslim countries are not nearly so restrictive as Saudi Arabia which forbids the importation of a single  Bible for personal use.  But, in or out of the Muslim world, attitudes toward minorities’ religious rights vary so enormously, information touching on tolerance and intolerance is so anecdotal, practice so often departs from noble constitutional language and rhetoric serves mainly to lob verbal missiles across walls of willful misunderstanding and naked impermeable hostility. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Sorting out this mishmash is well nigh impossible, so let’s start from scratch, again.  Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came into effect on December 10, 1948, contains the following language:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

In many places today, constitutions written in consonance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights notwithstanding, there is in fact no freedom of religion or conscience.  In other places, law and practice hew fairly close to Article 18.  However, even in these very happy countries (from a liberal’s point of view), disputes arise over claims of unequal treatment.  Given the degree to which diverse people migrate from country to country and belief communities hive off into new neighborhoods, it might be wise to call an interfaith, interdenominational conference to define more specifically what those universal rights entail, not only on paper, but in practice.  As we all know, various sorts of red tape can and do frustrate many beautifully written, well meant laws.