WhirledView

Dust Bunnies of the West

A Review Article and Business Proposal

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Remember the brouhaha over the French politician who waylaid a maid in a classy New York hotel?  It was  a colossally sordid encounter that ruined the guy’s reputation, career and marriage, a rare trifecta for a Big Man, although mere maids are more easily crushed by the—ahem!—weight of the least scandal.  Sneaking around.  Doors opening and shutting.  The he-said-she-said routine.   Was he taking advantage of her?  Was she taking advantage of him?  The gossips couldn’t decide and the courts were mushy.  From opening to end game, the affair gave a sex a very bad name.  Again.  Hyped or psyched, sex seldom escapes the tsk-tsk chorus.

How odd this is.  Sex may not make the world go round, but it sure keeps the globe populated.  And fed.  As Georgia Okeeffe so elegantly demonstrated, even flowers are breathtakingly sexy, though their own seedy practice is less than emotionally engaging, notwithstanding the suggestive power of nectar-sipping ruby-throated hummingbirds.  As for the human sphere, what a contrast!  Everything is sexualized, eroticized or at least romanticized. Sex sells and sells and sells, and yet the smut clings.  The latest sex slave blockbuster proves it.  Millions of copies sold.  Millions of readers wallowing in a masturbatory sty of guilt and shame, captives in an upscale mix of  harem and tool shed.

Dust Bunnies of the West is committed to changing all that. Sure we’ll have branches in the East, too, but we’re in love with western connotations—wide open spaces, sunshine, blue skies, zephyrs caressing the prairies.  Think New Mexico.  Hardly ever a day with anything like a shade of gray sky.  Ditto the Dust Bunnies’ vision: no dirty corners and no dirty minds—and never never never a dust bunny under a rumpled, unmade bed.  We’re energetically on top of every challenge every day.  Clean houses. Clean sheets.  Clean minds.  Clean sex.  And this, too: we’re an equal opportunity employer.  None need go with his/her/their requirements unsatisfied.  Male nurses abound these days.   So why not a gamut, a whole bright and beautiful rainbow of options? However you like ‘em, satisfaction guaranteed, in technicolor, with a smile.

Plus we lavish full attention on all senses.  For instance, we’ve tamed the cacophony of industry’s most joy-crushing, most obnoxious machine: the vacuum cleaner, an eardrum busting  monster that sucks everything up, your pink pearl earring along with table crumbs and boot dirt.  Roar and slurp!  But not our vacs.  They hum. They purr.  Wisps of sound, lovely little nothings, intruding so lightly on aural space they’re easily tuned out.  But why would you? To hear traffic? To hear the dishwasher?   Ah no. These are the sounds of Dust Bunnies of the West functioning perfectly to make you happy: the breeze slithering through prairie grass, the wind slipping among cinnamon-scented ponderosas, the lover with perfect pitch.

Which reminds me: why should a discriminating customer suffer a home that ends up reeking of pine or lemon oil?  Or French perfume clichés?  Or the funereal obtuseness of lilies and tuberoses?  What in this blessed world could be sweeter than the scent of sheets aired in the sun to say nothing of newly showered skin to match?  Don’t draw the curtains or close the blinds, fearing exposure.  Be bold!  Open the window.  Open your mind.   Open your arms.  Breathe deeply.  How sweet it is!  The deep deep deep holistic Dust Bunny experience!

Uniforms.  What to wear?  We bounced that around ad nauseum.  The body suit was obvious. Leotards are the ultimate tease, concealing and revealing.  Easy on, easy off, too, with nape to nookie zipper.   One of us—amazingly!—suggested a cute little apron, with ruffles.  We hooted that one down, along with the notion of rabbit ears sprouting from a Bunny’s temples.  That bit had us in stitches, our gym-sculpted abs screaming in pain.  But ah! given the demise of the miracle bra era, it was clearly time for a bunny tail renaissance.  No one ogles what’s up front these days.  Only the outback catches the eye.  Bottoms, buns, rears, asses, buttocks—these are the new boobs.  Rubenesque haunches are in.  Jeans come with curvy padding.

So Dust Bunnies of the West voted, unanimously, to create the apotheosis of bunny tails, relegating all known cotton ball aberrations to the dust bin of history.  Our vision of tail perfection: a generous and truly marvelous downy puff, seductively soft.  Gossamer heaven with a velcro anchor.  Thus: easy on, easier off.  So, close your eyes and brush it across your cheeks.  Bury your nose in silky ecstasy.  Toss it on the sofa among the throw pillows to remind you of the marvelous moments that make up the all inclusive Dust Bunny experience, because  you can have your very own bunny tail for a mere $29.95.  Double that for the leotard, too, in the super sexy color of your choosing.  Or spring for two tails and join the Dust Bunnies of the West cheer leading squad.  Give me an S, give me an E, give me an X.  Give me....satisfaction!

Not surprisingly the lemon oil types are hurting—and the things they’re saying!  Truly scurrilous! As if our rigorously selected Dust Bunnies of the West were nothing but tumble weeds.   We do like a tumble—in the grass, on the beach, on an oriental or a broadloom or, best of all, on a well made bed.  After all, spontaneity and you-know-what make  the world go round.  But as for the weed accusation, we may have to call a lawyer.  We’re clean.  We honor our contracts.  We pay our taxes.  Our customers are euphoric.   We’re  Dust Bunnies of the West, the ultimate in superior maid service—and if you heard “made” service instead, blame it on the slippery English language.

Good News from Sri Lanka: Is It Sustainable?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Take a good look at the photo of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the two term president of Sri Lanka who called a snap election, expecting to win  by a landslide, then lost, decisively.  Note the aggressive mustache, the arched eyebrows, the bug eyes.  Shift your gaze to the polychrome of the rakshasha Ravana (folk art from the Indian state of Odisha), the demon king of Sri Lanka whose abduction of Ram’s wife Sita led to his own destruction, according to the much beloved Indian epic.  Could there be a better caricature of the ultra ambitious Rajapaksa, who was working his way toward becoming a president for life?  And how was he going about that?  By getting Sri Lanka’s Constitution amended to allow himself to succeed himself unendingly, by putting siblings and other puppets in top government and army positions and by thoroughly cowing the rest of the population, including the judiciary and potential opponents among the Singhalese as well as the defeated and humiliated Tamils.

Just as a lecherous Ravana lured Sita out of her charmed circle by pretending to be a sweet little deer, Rajapaksa wooed his Singhalese Buddhist compatriots into seeing him as the urgently needed savior of the lovely, conflict-torn island nation of  Sri Lanka.  During his first term, a protracted and very ugly civil was brought to a dramatic close in a high fatality, highly controversial battle, after which a popular victorious general who’d dared to oppose Rajapaksa in his run for reelection was imprisoned on over-hyped charges.  The message was clear.  If Rajapaksa and company could destroy a war hero, the same or worse could happen to other challengers.  To solidify his post-war hold on the Singhalese majority, Rajapaksa made no effort to rehabilitate the non-combatant Tamil population, forcing them to live under concentration camp conditions that gave rise to international criticism.  The human rights community also demanded an investigation of that final battle.  Had an overweening Rajapaksa government as well as the despicable Tigers* been guilty of war crimes?  

Rajapaksa resisted outside scrutiny, thus becoming a pariah to the Western democracies that had been showering Sri Lanka with foreign aid.  No problem, said Rajapaksa.  He turned to an unjudgmental China for grants and development support.  The result: a new improved harbor in-the-making for Colombo plus a strengthened economy, the latter surely just what he needed to clinch his election to a third term. Unfortunately for Rajapaksa, in his greed for unchallenged power he’d alienated more than a few democracy-loving Singhalese Buddhists as well as the Muslims, Christians and Tamils who’d long been part of a once fairly harmonious multiethnic state.  And so he lost the election.   

Meanwhile, the Chinese alliance offered a collateral benefit for Rajapaksa.  It allowed him to thumb his nose at big neighbor India as well as the U.S., this in spite of the fact that India was a natural ally in the struggle against the Tigers, who’d eyed the south Indian state of Tamilnadu as a logical part of their future Tamil nation.  In 1991, in fact,  a Tiger operative had assassinated an Indian Prime Minister who (like his predecessors) had no intention of presiding over the disintegration of India.  However, New Delhi’s threat/offer to provide troops to assist in the civil war was no more attractive to Colombo than to the rebels.  The not entirely paranoid fear: would assistance be the prelude to a full scale Indian occupation?  As an antidote to India’s annoyingly hegemonic assumptions about the sub continent, the routine  presence of the Chinese fleet in Sri Lankan waters had a strong attraction.  Needless to say, the Indians were watching the election campaign in Sri Lanka very closely.  To New Delhi Rajapaksa was Ravana redux.    

Rajapaksa is gone now—and for good, hopefully.  But what about his successor?  He’s a member of the same party as Rajapaksa, the very Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by the Bandaranyeke family who generated support by stoking Sinhalese nationalism and enacting legislation excluding Tamils from equal educational and employment opportunities.  The SLFP’s relentless ethnic demagogy provoked the backlash of despair and anger that made the birth of Tamil terrorism almost inevitable.   Is the new man up to the arduous business of rebuilding long wrecked bridges?

Less than a month into his presidency Maithripala Sirisena seems free of the Ravana-complex, and he’s saying the right things. For instance:  “What this country needs is not a [demon] king, but a real human being.” Better yet, in his first address to the nation he promised to lead the country back to a parliamentary system of governance. Nice words.  And they come with promising deeds as well. Sirisena has replaced the much resented Governor of the Tamil-dominated Northern Province.  Not only has he installed a career diplomat instead of a general who fought against the Tigers in the civil war, that very diplomat served on a Truth Commission in favor of investigating abuses during the last phase of the war.   But these are early days.  It won’t be easy to make reparations to the Tamils without alienating the Sinhalese majority.  We can only hope that Mahinda Rajapaksa won’t have the last laugh.

And how about China?  It’s said that Sirisena plans to make some changes in that relationship.   Any reduction in Chinese influence should make New Delhi happy—and Washington, too.


*I use the term “Tigers” as a composite representing a number of groups with similar goals and tactics of which the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam is the most important.

Will the real Russia please stand up?

By Patricia H Kushlis 

It wasn't long after I began to work as an Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the US Embassy in Moscow during Brezhnev's later years, that I learned the realities of Soviet life.  As it turned out, only one Soviet who I met during my two year stint in that workers' paradise was a true believer.  Most everyone else in the official bureaucracy mouthed the Communist rhetoric but in reality had long given up hope of life in a functional – let alone humane - system. Many Soviets sought an exit, or at least a chance to see the non-Soviet world firsthand, or even just talk with someone from the West.  Very few of those people who come to mind now were dissidents.   

The Kremlin’s three legged stool

Television propaganda and fear of the omnipresent security services kept the population in check.  An economy of scarcity fueling massive bribery was the third leg of the stool that propped up the fractured system.  Ruble millionaires frequented night clubs.  A copy of Amerika Magazine secured an excellent table at a top restaurant – a terrific way to jump to the front of the line.  Four years at Tashkent University cost about the same as Harvard.  A new car was the entry price to its equivalent in Yerevan.  Even Communist Party hospitals for the elite had scarcities of basic antibiotics and even lacked sheets. 

Yet the nightly news was filled with lengthy reports of Soviet achievements followed by shots of sad homeless American blacks sprawled seated on freezing or sweltering Harlem curbsides.  That depended upon the time of year.

But nobody - including the woman who cleaned the bathrooms at the Hotel Rossiya on Red Square - believed the newscasts:  many Soviets had short wave sets and tuned in regularly to foreign broadcasts from VOA, BBC, Deutche Welle often late at night - turning their dials to escape the buzz of Soviet jammers.  Estonians who lived along the republic’s north coast – and in signal distance of Finland – aimed their television antennas northward giving them access to Finnish Broadcasting even if they were forbidden from visiting the country.

That Russian cleaning lady knew that Russians were poor and Americans rich: she told me so - I still remember her exact words.  She also knew that Soviet young men were being killed in Afghanistan, just as Russian soldiers are dying in Eastern Ukraine today, but that part of the story, like today’s, never appeared in the Soviet media. Soldiers’ graves and burials were then, as now, kept secret.  Everyone, it seems, knew anyway.

Mothers tried to protect their sons from the draft.  Bribes helped keep young men from the perils of hazing by their own counterparts or bullets from Afghan rifles.  Yet, somehow everyone knew. And this was well before the Internet Age or even access to copying machines which in those days were kept under lock and key:  the person-to-person rumor mill was amazingly effective.

Only good stories about the Soviet Union were deemed fit for Soviet eyes and ears.  The world outside those borders was painted as a dangerous place filled with the horrors of rapacious capitalism designed to tear the Soviet Union apart. Racism was rampant: little blond boys were especially prized by Russian grandmothers.   

Sound familiar?

Corruption was ubiquitous because everyone had to engage in it to live.   Even trading in the most innocent of goods - from bananas to jeans - was illegal. They would have had to been grown or produced in the Soviet Union. Bananas don’t grow well in northern climates and jeans – I suppose – were either beyond the country’s manufacturing capabilities or seen as a symbol of hated capitalism. Anyway the latter cost about $150 on the black market. Yet, jeans suits were the in-clothes at the Bolshoi Theater whose tickets were only available to the elite - or the well connected.

Je Suis Charlie

By Patricia Lee Shape

By all accounts the next edition of Charlie Hebdo is coming out on schedule.  That's the best reply to those who don't understand satire or the need for the full exercise of free speech, even when it hurts.  

Ukraine and Cuba: What a Contrast!

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I wish I were still in the foreign service.  This serendipitous conjunction of US and Russian foreign policy makes for a beautiful public diplomacy message: as Vladimir Putin’s Russia fights viciously to hold on to Ukraine, its uppity Cold War satellite, the US under Barack Obama looks to the future, re-establishing diplomatic  ties with Cuba.

Obama’s Cuban Surprise

Cuba is an interesting case.  Back in the nineteen fifties Cuba was indeed ripe for revolution.  Corruption was rife and American gangsters embedded in a flamboyant casino culture had a lot to do with it, while island politicking was dominated by a callous wealthy elite in cahoots with an unsavory dictator.  There was reason for ordinary Cubans and many Cuban intellectuals to resent, even hate, the United States for its support of the Batista regime, but Castro’s revolution was a pendulum swing that went way too far.  Lands and businesses were confiscated.  Freedom of speech and movement evaporated.  Tens of thousands of Cubans fled to Florida. 

All that was bad enough.  But when Havana welcomed a Soviet attempt to install on Cuban soil nuclear-armed missiles that could threaten the US, firm action had to be taken.  The US, under President John Kennedy, announced it would blow the USSR’s  missile-delivering ships out of the water unless they did an about face and headed back across the Atlantic.  This was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  For a few days things were very tense, and bomb shelters were best buys.  Was the Cold War about to get very very hot?  It didn’t, but relations have been frigid ever since.  It’s been US policy  to girdle Cuba with severe economic sanctions and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, not only to punish Cuba for becoming a Soviet dependency but to warn others away from a similar path.

Reactions in Miami's Little Cuba

A somewhat moderated version of those severe, even draconian sanctions remains in effect,  and a Republican-controlled  Congress is playing the Florida card for all it’s worth, threatening to prevent any significant change in US-Cuba relations.   (This goes in spades for the ex-Florida governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush.)  However, the Latin American world is praising Obama, which means our influence there is likely to improve,  and Miami’s Cuban community is far from unanimously unhappy about the prospect of easier contact with old friends and family.  Many are looking forward to eased nostalgia trips to ancestral sites.  Some are dreaming of returning to Cuba, not as visitors, but citizens.   Business is salivating. 

But there are indeed many die hards for whom a thousand years of iron-bound sanctions would not be enough, despite the fact that their version of tough love has failed 100% to make a dent in the Castro regime.   Naturally their counterpart Castroites in Cuba will cling as long as they can to a non-productive system, and the wily Vladimir Putin will do his best to encourage them, even though a Russia not rolling in rubles can’t do much in the way of subsidizing loyalty.  My own hunch is that the relaxation will hold despite the largely theatrical Republican squawking  and change will occur, though gradually and probably without a neat cause/effect sequence that will make either side feel like an out-and-out winner or loser, which should make for greater stability.

Russian Apron Strings for Ukraine

Meanwhile—and this amuses me mightily, Vladimir Putin wants to control Ukraine as a permanent satellite, even though, during the Cold War, it suited Moscow to declare Ukraine a fully independent nation worthy of its own seat in the U.N.  In making a case for neutralizing Ukraine, Putin has the support of  a good many American analysts of the “expert” variety.  According to various documents and discussions, they insist,  then U.S. President Reagan promised Mikhail Gorbachev that a post Cold War Ukraine would never be allowed to ally itself with the West.  Thus, by not objecting to Kiev’s desire to draw closer to Europe (and, more recently, to NATO, thanks ironically to Putin’s jealous bellicosity), the current administration is breaking a solemn pledge—or so these scholars say.  

To these mistakenly scrupulous friends of Moscow, however, I put this question: do Moscow and Washington have the right to determine forever which alliances a sovereign Ukraine will make?  I think not, which tempts me to ask them and the present occupants of the Kremlin a further question.  If Russia has a right to reincorporate Crimea, wouldn’t it be consistent to pressure Moscow to release its hold on Kaliningrad, a fairly recent Soviet land grab which consists of a patch of territory squeezed between Poland and Lithuania and sharing no common boundary with Russia.  But—aha!—Kaliningrad does border the Baltic sea.  Thus, like Crimea, it offers a warm water port to a country that is mostly iced in all winter.  Russia has big naval bases in both places.  As for Kaliningrad, it’s also a nifty launch pad for short and medium range nukes intended to keep Europe on edge.   Nevertheless, Mr. Putin:  Kaliningrad for Crimea? Seems logical to me, though Kiev might not be as happy as Poland and/or Lithuania–or NATO.  

It’s Hard to be Pure

Speaking of naval bases, I can’t help thinking of Guantanamo, that corner of Cuba which, since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, has hosted the US fleet.  Of course, most people don’t think of that Guantanamo nowadays.  They think of the post 9/11 prison, which Barack Obama promised to empty once he was president. Two years into his second term more than a hundred prisoners still languish there.  Given the further fact that the Cubans have wanted the US off the island for decades, our strong position on Putin's repossession of Crimea is somewhat complicated, if not entirely compromised.  Nevertheless, at this point in time, the US is opening a proper embassy in Havana, not trying to convert the whole or part of Cuba  into the 51st state.  

Raj-like Fantasies

Obviously, the Ukraine-Cuba comparison isn’t  a tweedledum-tweedledee proposition, but it does suggest that the US is ready to let the Cold War slide into history. Meanwhile, the current President of Russia is doing his best to turn back the hands of time, a trick that’s very hard to carry off.  Setting aside the grave issue of his sending troops across recognized international borders,  Putin’s scheming/dreaming project to recreate the Soviet empire seems to this writer as quixotic as reconstructing the British raj in India.