Greece Is Slaughtering Its Elephants.

What elephants?  Bear with me (no pun) and you'll see.

Forty years ago, amid another life, I attended an event in a close friend’s Upper Eastside NYC apartment filled with glitterati out of a Dominick Dunne novel.  The nation was in turmoil, torn apart and galvanized into intractable positions over the Vietnam War.  That night we were introduced to a decorated navy man and his organization, John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

It was a fundraiser and I was standing next to a local TV reporter buddy I suspected felt just as fiscally out of place in that crowd as did I.  I still smile when I think of him leaning over and whispering to me, “Jeffrey, what are we doing here?”  Today, that’s not a question Geraldo Rivera would likely ask in any crowd.:)

The highlight of the evening came when I was introduced to a group of three men chitchatting in a corner.  They graciously brought me into their conversation, though to be honest—and as hard as it may be to believe—my total contribution was a star-struck “hello” and on-cue nods to the back and forth among Messers Kevin McCarthy (actor and brother of author Mary McCarthy), Andy Warhol, and Kurt Vonnegut.

It was all a blur, except for one comment made by Kurt Vonnegut that I shall never forget.  And perhaps never fully understood until this morning as I contemplated what to write for today’s post.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

In response to a question from Kevin McCarthy about what each regretted most about The War, Vonnegut said, “The elephants.  The slaughter of the elephants.”

Yes, elephants are a symbol of strength, honor, stability, and patience; a vibrant bulldozer of obstacles to success.   But I didn’t see that, and my immediate reaction I dared not voice: “What an isolated, intellectually pretentious thing to say in the face of all the human suffering experienced there every day.”

That just goes to show how little I knew then…or now.

I doubt there is an informed individual anywhere on earth who is unaware of Greece’s fiscal crisis.  On top of that, each day more learn of a homegrown terrorist organization seeking to cleanse “their” country of those they believe are not “true Greeks.”

But this is not about any of that, for ultimately Greece alone will bear the burdens of its fiscal and national identity decisions. Yes, there will be financial turmoil in world markets and undoubtedly some will suffer, but the world will adjust and go on to prosper.  

No, this is about the ongoing slaughter of Greece’s elephants.

The best and brightest of the nation’s youth are fleeing Greece in torrents unmatched in decades.  They see no future in an economy geared to protecting the connected and already successful, where all the bickering and battles between those in favor of and those opposed to the status quo are seen only as words, and change is not expected no matter whom the ultimate victor.

I ask you Greece, does it really matter who wins if you’ve slaughtered your elephants? 

Jeff—Saturday

Crack the Pigeon

Every now and then a news story comes along that's so fascinating it's difficult to think of anything else. My post a fortnight ago about Jimmy Savile was one. I came across another, slightly more light-hearted you'll be happy to know, this week.

A few weeks ago David Martin of Surrey was renovating his chimney when he came across the remains of a pigeon. Attached to its leg was a small red canister. Inside that was a piece of paper headed 'Pigeon Service.' Beneath that were 27 blocks of handwritten code.

The pigeon had been dispatched during World War Two with its coded message, but had obviously experienced difficulties. The message never arrived. Now after two weeks of trying, the finest minds in Britain have conceded defeat. They can't break the code. They're hoping the public can help them crack it.

Given the pigeon was found in a chimney, the only suggestion they've had so far is that the first two blocks mean 'Dear Santa.'

cheers

Dan - Friday

Good News Week

I was very impressed with Tim’s take on the news a couple of weeks ago, and thought I should do something similar on the South African scene.  I do have a problem, however.  I’m enough of a snob to get most of my news from the New York Times, where it’s well written and has an international perspective, rather than from the local newspapers, which tend to be in the league of the Oshkosh Observer, and believe that good writing means that a sentence often contains a verb.  So my local news tends to come from spotting newspaper headline posters as I drive to work.  Some of them make no sense to me whatsoever.  I presume a headline like VAN DER SPUY EXCELS has something to do with a sport in which South Africa is a world leader.  Biltong eating competitions or disabled swimming would do it.  (Actually we’re pretty good at abled swimming too.)  Or SWEDE VICTORY FOR STENSON which I guess has something to do with growing vegetables.  However, some of the others make perfect sense to me and I thought I’d share a few of those with you.

Last week I saw: ZUMA INSULT LAW MOOTED.  Now I have to say I’m opposed to this.  While there is plenty to insult Zuma about – infidelities, enough wives for a hotel and enough children for their own school, various rumors of improprieties of the financial kind, and a quaint attitude to AIDS – I think that the man has been insulted enough.  He is after all the president of our country.  Why should we be compelled to insult him?  Following his rather charming comment that he didn’t mind having unprotected sex with an HIV positive lady – make that woman – because he had a good shower afterwards, he never appears in cartoons other than with a shower head halo, with the pipe uncomfortably stuck down his backbone.  Surely this insult should keep him going for some time?  (He considered it significant enough to sue Zapiro, the cartoonist, and the newspaper concerned, but recently withdrew the suit.  I had the pleasure of sitting at the next table while the newspaper celebrated this triumph with good food and wine.)  Furthermore, how is this law to be enforced?  Will Zuma police knock on your door in the middle of the night and demand an off-the-cuff insult?  

We already have a variety of laws which are good in principle but impossible to implement in practice.  For example, you are not allowed to use a cell phone while driving.  Yet people do this all the time and even use smart phones to watch Youtube clips while casting occasional glances at the traffic.  No prizes for guessing what sort of clip appeals.

Yet this was followed the next day by an even more surprising revelation.  I can’t wait for the NYT to give us the details: I’VE BEEN PAINTED BLACK – ZUMA.  Now this is a biggie.  We’ve always been rather proud of the fact that we had a black president here before it became so fashionable to do so, and no one has ever suggested that Mandela is anything but black.  But it seems Zuma is actually only colored black.  Come to think of it, he looks pretty white in those cartoons...

This is amazing news, and suggests that all the black economic empowerment contracts which have gone to members of his family need to be withdrawn.  Perhaps some of them are black, but are they black enough if he isn’t?  He was already struggling to get re-election as ANC president next month.  I suspect this may be the last nail in the coffin.  I don’t think South Africa is ready just yet for a president who has come out of the color closet.

Moving off politics, the Star newspaper has a supplement called VERVE directed at women.  It, too, trumpets headlines along the lamp poles as I drive to the university.  On the same day we were threatened with compulsory insulting, Verve announced: MEN – SIZE DOES MATTER.  Now this one I understood at once.  Clearly they are referring to the new cell phones.  As they get smarter (in inverse proportion to our ability to use them), they also sport larger screens.  With the Ipad, at least Apple doesn't pretend it's a phone.  Samsung has a phone about the same size.  This makes you look a total idiot if you get a call – rather similar to walking around holding a dinner plate to your head.  You have to shout so that your voice reaches the mike.  (That’s no problem; people always seem to shout at cell phones.)  Alternatively, of course, you can use Bluetooth with Ice Cream Sunday or Gingerbread or some other variety of dessert and wander around looking like Mr. Spock.  So why was this article directed at MEN specifically? Presumably your girl is impressed if you can hold the phone up to your head long enough to make a date.  Keep working on those biceps, guys.

My final offering is from Verve the next day.  This time it proclaimed: THE RETURN OF CHEST HAIR.  I didn’t even know it had left.  Hopefully this one also refers to men!  Or maybe there’s a new South African pop group out there – just back from abroad – that I’ve never heard of.  I’ll keep you posted.

Michael – Thursday. 

Seeing is believing

I  no longer care what laser eye treatment did to Tiger Woods' golf game, I am going to have my eyes done. Reading glasses are such a drag and trying to get along without them can lead to mix-ups and messes.

At the moment I am in beautiful Leipzig on my way to Berlin tomorrow for a reading in conjunction with the publishing of Todesschiff - translated directly: the Death ship.

For four years prior to university I studied German as my fourth language and although I can somehow line up perfect German sentences and speeches in my head, the vent connecting my brain to my tounge is kaput. I sound like a four year old, which is probably all one can expect after learning to talk it for four years.

My hotel room is a jumbled mess since I have been shopping and have yet to get the proceeds of this venture into my suitcases. For this reason I put a "do not disturb" sign outside the door last night and intended to keep it there all day.  Despite this the cleaning woman seemed intent on entering this morning and before leaving the room I had to be quite abrupt to her so that she would stop her attempts to get in. It was a bit odd.

When I left the room I put on my reading glasses and these coupled with my cracked and splintered German allowed me to see what had happened. It does not take a detective to see what is coming as I had of course turned the sign the wrong way, unable to see well enough bare-eyed that the sign read "please clean". No wonder the woman looked at me funny when I kept closing the door in her face.

So I turned the sign around and left. Upon my return just now I enter the room and the poor woman has somehow managed to tidy everything up despite the state of the room. Understandably the turning of the sign must have caused this - if I did not want her when I put up the sign asking for her services then I must want her to enter when I put up a sign saying I want her to stay away.

Speaking of eyesight. In other news (as if the above can be considered news) my beloved little dog was in an altercation the evening before I left and one of his eyes popped out. Something no one wants to experience. He had an operation and they put the eye back in and sewed it shut  but this being a weekend the vet had no assistant to help and we had to step in. My husband did it - although I can write horrible stuff I am unable to hold an eye in place while someone uses a needle and thread on an eyelid. Next week we will know if he will keep the eye or if the sewed up lid is a permanent fixture. Fingers crossed. Worst comes to worst he will look like a cute pirate.

Yrsa - Wednesday

Murder in Brazil #6 – Cops And Robbers

On Saturday, the 3^rd of November, the woman pictured above was opening the garage door in front of her home in São Paulo when two assailants drove up on a motorcycle and shot her ten times in the back, throat and abdomen.

Maria Umbelina da Silva was a forty-four-year-old cop. Her eleven-year-old daughter, who’d witnessed it all, screamed for help, but it was too late. Her mother never made it to a hospital.

Two days earlier, another police officer was murdered at the jiujitsu academy where he gave classes. Two days later, a third was shot dead in front of his family while returning from a church service.

All together, almost a hundred São Paulo cops have been killed, half of them assassination style, since the most recent wave of violence began.

The cops have reacted to the threat by doing some killing of their own: almost 300 people in the course of the last two months.

Some were known criminals.

Others were perfectly-innocent victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s an eye-for-an-eye escalating war going-on between the forces of law-and-order and the PCC, Brazil’s largest and most notorious gang.

In the past week, we’ve seen helicopter coverage of a high-speed chase and deadly shootout on the belt road around the city, a video (shot by a bystander on his cell phone – and aired on a national network) showing five cops killing an unarmed felon in cold blood, the arson of several buses, and the death of more than fifty non-combatants, including a sixty-three-old man who was run over when a bus driver tried to flee attackers.

It all goes back to May of this year when three police officers murdered a PCC member in the course of a drug bust.

The police were jailed, and face charges, but it wasn’t enough to mollify the leaders of the gang.

Outraged, they ordered their members to take revenge by killing officers.

Most of those orders have been issued, via mobile phones, from incarcerated gang leaders.

Why not simply take away the phones?

Prison officials do, but the crooks are constantly being supplied with new ones, generally by other, more corrupt, prison officials.

Jam the signals?

It can’t be done without interfering with mobile coverage in the area of the prisons – and that has been blocked, in court, by both service providers and citizen’s groups.

But it’s also true that the cops aren’t working too hard to overturn the judgments. Instead, they’re tapping the calls and, although the criminals have learned to speak in codes, the police have become adept at cracking them.

Another complication is that São Paulo’s prison system doesn’t have the capacity to isolate dangerous inmates.

The federal prisons do, but the last time the state government tried to move PCC leaders into them (in 2006) it unleashed a wave of violence resulting in attacks on police precincts with automatic weapons and hand grenades.

And in the death of almost five hundred people.

Like I said, it’s a war.

Leighton - Monday  

First-Person Perfect

“Don't you love this time of evening, Mr. Wooster, when the sun has gone to bed and all the bunnies come out to have their little suppers?  When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”

“Talking of shedding tears,” I said firmly, “it may interest you to know that there is an aching heart at Brinkley Court.”

This held her.  She cheesed the rabbit theme.  Her face, which had been aglow with what I supposed was a pretty animation, clouded.  She unshipped a sigh that sounded like the wind going out of a rubber duck.

There we have Madeleine Bassett, certainly among the dampest female characters in all fiction, as presented through one of comic literature's few perfect first-person narratives, that of Bertie Wooster, in P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves.  I go for years between Wodehouse novels, and then, when I read one, I ask myself why I read anything else.  Bertie is nonpareil.

These are, of course the “Jeeves” novels, but Jeeves—although he's certainly the world's greatest fictional butler—is almost a plot contrivance.  The genius is Bertie's narrative, absolutely consistent, totally confident, unerringly wrong.  Look at the verbs alone: “cheesed,” “clouded,” “unshipped.”  Unshipped?

And the rubber duck.  Not just the comparison of the sound of a sighing woman with a rubber duck, and the duck's perfect position at the end of the sentence, but the fact that rubber ducks figure strongly in Bertie's frame of reference and this does not surprise us.  In this book alone, he has two encounters with a rubber duck

Here's Bertie's description of one of the unfortunate secondary characters of What Ho, Jeeves:

Gussie Fink-Nottle lived year in and year out, covered with moss, in a remote village down in Lancashire, never coming up to London even for the Eton and Harrow match.  And when I asked him once whether he didn't find the time hanging a bit heavy on his hands, he said, no, because he had a pond in his garden and studied the habits of newts.

Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeleine Bassett's charms notwithstanding, it's no wonder that the Jeeves books haven't really worked in dramatic form (and I include the very good BBC series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, pictured above) because without Bertie's narrative, what you've got is somewhat mechanical drawing-room comedy with plot reversals that wouldn't look out of place in a sitcom.

This is not a knock on Wodehouse.  These elements suffer an almost mystical sea-change when filtered through Bertie's skewed and somewhat filmy perspective.  But only on the page.  As an example, one of the highlights of this book, Bertie's account of an eighteen-mile bicycle ride, over unlighted country roads on a dark night, to fetch a key no one actually needs, would be, on film, a man on a bike in the dark, whereas in Bertie's telling it takes on almost Homeric proportions.  If Homer had been an upper-class twit in whose frame of reference rubber ducks were prominently featured.

Wodehouse's magic is (to me, anyway) unique.  It's not just funny--I laugh more or less continuously when I read him--but it's comforting, this world of well-tailored dimwits named Bertie and Gussie Fink-Nottle and Tuppy Glossop and Pongo Twistleton and (best of all) Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, and gargoyle aunts and country houses and damp debutantes who can turn predatory in between the noun and the verb.  It's comforting to me in the same way that the so-called Golden Age mysteries are to those people who got all savage with me a year or so ago when I dared to suggest that they trivialized murder.  Wodehouse relaxes me the way only the very best writers do--he lets me know from the first sentence that he's in control, and that the world of the book, although it may not be much larger than a good-size snow globe, will be explored thoroughly, so thoroughly that it will seem, in retrospect, that I peered under every carpet.  And enjoyed it.

Few things are trickier than intelligence.  We've all read presumably brilliant characters whom we wouldn't trust to button their shirts straight and less-gifted characters whose relative thickness is suggested mostly by their use of short words.  In Wodehouse, we have acres of completely convincing idiocy on display, in varying degrees, and best of all, it's described by one who is supremely, even blithely, unconscious of his own shortcomings.  It is, I think, one of the funniest ideas in fiction.

Here's Bertie on Madeleine again:

It was not her beauty, mark you, that thus numbed me.  She was a pretty enough girl in a droopy, blonde, saucer-eyed way, but not the sort of breath-taker that takes the breath.

Two sentences.  Do you need to know anything else in the world?  About either of them, the observer ot the observed?  Every writer who breathes can learn about perspective, tone, and economy from these books. I rest my case.

Tim -- Sunday

All About Greek Superstitions

I started off thinking I’d write a piece on the Goddess Athena, in thanks for her sparing my farm from the wrath of her namesake of a Nor’easter storm.  It struck me as unwise not to do so, which led me to thinking about superstitions and how there are no people I know of more superstitious than the Greeks.  So, with all due respect Athena, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for another slot.   This week it’s all about Greek superstitions, many of which are shared in different forms among other world cultures.  

Though I don’t consider myself superstitious, permit me a moment to say ftou, ftou, ftou, representing the Greek superstition of spitting three times to chase the devil and misfortune away whenever you talk about bad things.  Such as failing to properly thank a Greek god for saving your farm.  

On that segue here are some of the basic Greek superstitions, for which I wish to credit the assistance of
two websites, The Embassy of Greece and Susie Atsaides.

Without question the biggie is the Evil Eye.  In fact, many other Greek superstitions are designed to deal with risks presented by the Evil Eye.  It can strike at any time, and is taken very seriously. Educated, level-headed people believe in it, as does the Greek Orthodox Church (calling it Vaskania), and those with the “gift” for casting it away from those put upon by the Evil Eye are revered.

The process of casting away involves techniques passed down in secret from generation to generation and involves prayers coupled with a lot of yawning by healer and victim.  In these modern days, I’ve seen healers perform the process over cell phones, or respond without any sort of contact with the victim beyond an SMS or email plea for help. 

In a nutshell, the Evil Eye can be put on you, your children, your livestock or your fruit trees by anyone who looks at them with envy and praises them.  Envy is the big villain in this.

The number one defense against the Evil Eye is the little blue eyes ormati sold virtually everywhere in Greece.  Greeks drape them around their necks, wrists, rearview mirrors and in myriads of places in their offices and homes. It is the universal protector. All of which is attributed to the color blue that is said to reflect away evil.  I guess that means the eyes now offered for sale in other, “more fashionable” colors leave you open to being much more than just a fashion victim.

Some Greeks go so far as to say to be aware of blue-eyed people offering compliments, for that could be particularly dangerous.  I wonder if that would deter a Greek from the flattery of a Paul Newman look-alike or the baby blues of a modern day Grace Kelly?  Some how I think they’d simply opt for an extra mati or two and take the risk.:)

Garlic also works to ward off the Evil Eye.  Some carry a clove with them at all times, in their pocket or—as I’ve seen suggested—in their bra.  Garlic, along with onions, is also said to have great healing power if you’re feeling ill—perhaps over losing your shot at Paul and/or Grace to a whiff of your garlic stash.

If you want the evil eye protective quality of the garlic, without the scent, when someone gives you a compliment, mutter skorda(garlic) under your breath and spit on yourself three times. If you want real protection ask the person who gave you the compliment to spit on you too, though that may lead to an immediate reassessment of the person’s original opinion.  A word of caution: some say if a compliment is given to a child in your presence you should spit on the child.  I suggest asking the parents before attempting that kindness.

Another common practice for warding off the Evil Eye is a thorny-spiked cactus close to the front entrance to your home.  Be particularly careful is one if nearby should you choose to spit on someone else’s kid.

Some superstitions offer a conundrum. Bat bones are considered very lucky, but killing a bat (to presumably get the bones) is said to be very bad luck.

Crows, on the other hand are just bad luck period, as omens of bad news, misfortune, and death.  Guess Poe got it right.:)

If a Greek ever asks you for a knife, never hand it directly Put it on the table and let the other pick it up. Otherwise, superstition holds you two will soon be in a fight.

Another sure fight starter is if two people say the same thing at the same time.  Such as “I love Target: Tinos.”  The only way to avoid an imminent fight is for each to instantly touch whatever red they can find around them (like the cover of A Vine in the Blood, The Fear Artist or any of Michael Stanley’s covers) and say piase kokkino(touch red).

And never leave your shoes soles up; it’s very bad luck and even an omen of death.  But don’t fear if it should happen to you some day. Just say skorda (remember, it means garlic) and spit three times for good measure and you’ll be fine.

I understand the skorda whisper technique also works to ward off the bad omen of seeing a priest and black cat on the same day. Some say it whenever they see just the priest.

If you sneeze, that means someone is talking about you and there is a way to figure out whom that is.  Frankly, all I’m interested in knowing at such moments is who has a tissue or Claritin.

Greeks also believe money attracts money, so superstition requires you to never completely empty a purse, pocket, wallet or bank account.  I suspect that one’s being sorely tested these days.

But the superstition that I find most telling about the Greek attitude toward life is how they treat Friday the 13th.  Why ruin an otherwise perfectly good weekend with worries about a Friday of bad luck? So, they stick in the middle of the workweek. To Greeks, Tuesday the 13th is the bad luck day…possibly settling on a Tuesday for much for the same reason the US uses it as its election day—to keep the bad news away from spoiling a weekend.

Which brings me to the final superstition I want to talk about today. Salt.  Greeks sprinkle salt in a new house to chase away any lurking evil.  But that’s not the use of salt I find most intriguing.  It is believed that you can get rid of “unwanted human presence” by sprinkling salt behind them.  I think Americans should bear up arms of salt to cast behind any politician who dares to run for President before 2014. 

That’s all folks. Ftou, ftou, ftou.

Mati also come as cookies, courtesy of the Sparta (NJ) Public Library

Jeff—Saturday