Armenia

Back in August we heard about the incipient rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey that was to culminate in an imminent restoration of diplomatic relations. On October 10, after a last-minute dispute over wording was resolved with input (shall we say) from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the two countries signed a historic agreement to do just that, reopening borders that Turkey sealed in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabagh. Although some elements in the Armenian diaspora expressed displeasure at the terms of the agreement, other major players fell in line behind it, as the New York Times reports:

Despite noisy street protests, some influential expatriate groups in the United States—including the Western and Eastern Dioceses of the Armenian Church, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Knights of Vartan and the Armenian Assembly of America—announced they would back the agreement, in a joint statement that was released Oct. 1.

While I’m sympathetic to those who are unhappy, I think the opinions of Armenians in Armenia trump the feelings of those abroad, and I doubt the pressure Armenia was subjected to caused it to perform a suicidal, or even self-destructive, act. But time, as it always does, will tell.

Bees

The mysterious and devastating decline in honeybee populations in this country (and abroad) was noted here back in May 2007. The evidence is mounting that pesticides are the primary culprit. Now there’s a shocker.

Bikes

Bad news from Paris: their bike-sharing system has run into a nasty patch of human nature in the form of stolen and vandalized equipment.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

I was downtown last night and saw a half-empty SmartBike rack—the bikes that were there seemed fine, and the fact that many were missing I took as a good sign. Whether DC will eventually share the French experience remains to be seen.

Facebook

Still tired of it.

Google

I revisited my street via Google Street View and, lo and behold, I am no longer there. The building under construction on the corner is much further along in the new views—in fact, I can pretty accurately date the shots from the state of the site. So it looks like the Googlemonster is a restless beast, continually revisiting everything it encounters in addition to going new places all the time. Just like the way it crawls the web, come to think of it.

Kindle

Too many people keep borrowing it. That’s not unexpected, since it belongs to my employer, and the borrowing has to do with the stated reason for buying it: to see if we should start publishing on that platform. The upshot (for me) is that it’s a great way to read stuff that flows, where you just flow along with it. It’s not so hot for text that is technical, encyclopedic, laden with graphics or tables, or choppy—i.e., built for browsing (like a newspaper or website), not for reading straight through (like a novel). Also not great for marking up and making notes, in my opinion. It’s still pleasant to read with it, but I suspect Kindle will be seeing serious competition in the years ahead, if it isn’t already, especially from devices with touchscreens and color.

Obama

A year ago at this time we were wondering who the next president of the United States would be. Although he’s only been president since January 20, this is as good a time as any to take stock of Barack Obama. On the plus side, he made a pretty decent Supreme Court nomination and got her confirmed; he initiated bilateral talks with Iran and has ratcheted down the rhetoric; he has scrapped the antiballistic system in Eastern Europe, leading to improved relations with Russia (and maybe leverage in our dealings with Iran); and he has done some heavy lifting in pursuit of true healthcare reform, which will likely pass in some form during this current session of Congress. On the negative side, he has done little to extract the US from Iraq, and even less to shut down Guantánamo; he has continued some of the previous administration’s abuse of executive privilege and government secrecy; and he has made only a half-hearted show of exposing and dealing with White House and Justice Department culpability in justifying and providing cover for torture by the CIA and the military. Still to be scored is his approach to Afghanistan—he is currently deliberating, and the hope arises he will ditch the simpleminded bellicosity displayed in his campaign and find a saner solution to that mess.

Addendum 2009.11.02: I knew I would forget something: a small additional plus for Obama, who “took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.” What makes it small is this: “Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses.” And this: “Mr. Obama has said that he does not intend to reduce military spending while the nation is engaged in two wars.” We are no closer to discarding the notion that the US must be capable of fighting multiple strategic (i.e., nondefensive) wars simultaneously.

Addendum 2009.11.03: A significantly bigger, unvarnished plus: “Without fanfare, President Barack Obama has okayed a large cash infusion to help clean up the Great Lakes, quietly signing a bill that was years in the making and marks a rare bipartisan milestone.”

And it doesn’t matter that the Giants were actually the New York Giants at the time.

But this year I’ll be checking their box scores every night, right after I find out how the Tribe fared, just to see how their rookie shortstop Emmanuel Burriss is doing. Burriss was a classmate of my kid’s at Wilson High in the District, and he had Major League written all over him at the time. He went on to play ball at Kent State, where he was Player of the Year in the Mid-American Conference. As fate would have it, he’s a switch-hitter, just like his teammate Omar Vizquel, who made the nineties so enjoyable and memorable for us in Cleveland (in the extended sense of “Cleveland”), and who’s currently on the disabled list and isn’t even first string anymore (I don’t think).

Burriss stroked a double leading off the 13th inning on Wednesday, stole second, and scored the go-ahead run on a single in a game where Greg Maddox was denied his 350th win. Remembering how Maddox and the rest of the Atlanta pitching staff made monkeys of the Cleveland hitters in the ’95 World Series, I wasn’t particularly sad. (According to Wikipedia, “In 1995, the Cleveland Indians batted .291 as a team, led the league in runs scored, hits, and stolen bases, and had eight .300 hitters in their starting lineup. However, the Tribe was held to a .179 batting average in the World Series.”)

The Giants are in DC the first week in June. That will be additional incentive to get me down to the new ballpark.

Addendum 2008.05.04: There’s a nice profile of Emmanuel Burriss in today’s Washington Post.

I wrote a letter in response. Here is it, with a few typos fixed.

* * * * *

Thanks for reminding me how racist I am

I grew up in Cleveland in a large family where playing baseball was the family passion (I’m this close to saying “the family religion”). I loved the Indians, terrible as they were throughout the sixties and seventies and eighties. Chief Wahoo was simply part of the landscape. I don’t think I loved him. He was just there. In the case of the huge revolving Chief Wahoo at the old stadium, he was really there.

I was also interested in Indians as a kid—the real ones, some of whom lived in northeast Ohio at one time and left their names for things scattered all over the place: Cuyahoga, Geauga, Conneaut, Ashtabula, etc., etc. I don’t know if there was a connection between my interest in the baseball Indians and the phantom Indians. I read a lot of books about Indians and kept my eye peeled for arrowheads in the woods. That’s all I know.

Be that as it may, as a liberal – progressive – socialist – humanitarian – internationalist white guy, I have at times felt ill-at-ease with Chief Wahoo. On balance, I wish he would retire. The problem is, he doesn’t seem to age, and he looks so damn happy. I have noticed how the Indians front office has been downplaying the image in recent years. But of the millions of people who buy Indians gear, a certain percentage actually buys the stuff not in spite of the image but because of it. They are so benighted, aren’t they? What is wrong with these people?

But here’s the funny part (if you have a sense of humor, which most people outside of Cleveland don’t when it comes to Chief Wahoo). A few years ago I happened to be talking on the phone with someone in Maine, someone I’d never met, a guy who wanted to offer his web design services to my organization in northern Virginia (I live in Washington, DC). In passing I asked about the Penobscot tribe. He seemed surprised. He asked how I knew about them, and so on. I must’ve mentioned I’m from Cleveland, and somehow or other the Indians and their mascot came up (maybe it was 1997, a bittersweet year for Indians fans). I expressed my embarrassment about Chief Wahoo before we returned to the business at hand.

A few weeks later this guy in Maine sent me an e-mail saying how he had come across some Indians (the real ones) wearing the Cleveland Indians cap with Chief Wahoo. He asked them about it, and they said they love Chief Wahoo. They actually seemed to appreciate that there was a Major League baseball team called the Indians—that someone actually remembers that Indians exist, that they, in fact, had the run of the continent for centuries. Would they also have said, “Hey, white man, lighten up! You think Indians don’t laugh? You don’t think Indians appreciate a caricature? You think Indians are that touchy and soft and perpetually down-at-the-mouth?” They didn’t say that, as far as I know. They just wore the hats and said they liked them. Are they “self-hating Indians”? I wouldn’t like to assume that. Are they idiots? or fools? Hmm—I think it would be a bit racist to think that, don’t you?

As I said, if Chief Wahoo won’t ride off into the sunset on his own, I personally would like to see the Indians management give him more than a little nudge. But I don’t pretend to speak for anyone else. And I hope to see the Indians finish off the Red Sox and beat the Rockies. Not scalp them—just out-hit, out-run, out-pitch, and out-field them on the diamond. And I hope everyone, starting with King Kaufman, can keep their pain (which I’m sure is heartfelt) at seeing Chief Wahoo from billowing forth in phrases like “outrageously racist” and easy but misleading comparisons to minstrelsy. I, too, wish fans wouldn’t paint their faces like Chief Wahoo. But then, I wish they wouldn’t paint their faces at all. Or their flabby stomachs. I wish the loud music would go, and that people would watch the game—the indescribably beautiful game of baseball—with their undivided attention. Obviously I’m an old fart.

Perhaps some especially sensitive commentators can keep in mind that the presumably racist city of Cleveland happened to field the first black player in the American League and the first black manager in the major leagues (leaving aside that the white population of Cleveland helped elect the first black mayor of a major US city, that the college in nearby Oberlin was the first to regularly admit African-American students [back in 1835], and so on). If, every time the Indians claw their way to first place in their division and step onto the national stage, Chief Wahoo makes intelligent people like King Kaufman think the people of Cleveland are more racist than those who live in Chicago, or Boston, or Los Angeles, or [name a tiny town somewhere in the heartland], then that is the best reason for killing him. Not because you happen to think he offends Indians, or because he offends you (and makes you feel strangely good being offended), but because Cleveland gets a black eye, in what should be a deliriously happy time, over a silly cartoon—an Indian who’s giddy with the pleasure of competing and emerging victorious over a pair of socks, or an entire mountain range.

Today’s musical tidbits revolve around the Hitchcock classic Psycho. Anyone who’s seen it cannot help but be struck by the soundtrack, composed by the acclaimed Bernard Hermann. As Wikipedia notes, “The screeching violin music heard during the famous shower scene (which Hitchcock originally suggested have no music at all) is one of the most famous moments from all film scores.” Here’s what it sounds like, in case you’ve forgotten:

Now here’s a snippet from a piece composed some forty years earlier:

I think it’s unlikely Hermann would have been unaware of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which has enjoyed enormous popularity over the years. (The clip above features Berl Senofsky with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell; my best guess is that this radio broadcast dates from the late fifties or early sixties.) Hermann’s music is quite different, both in its relentless repetition and the palette of accompanying notes. And yet one can’t help but feel he must have been inspired, consciously or not, by the Prokofiev. (If unconsciously, it would be a case of cryptomnesia—another tip of the hat to Jonathan Lethem.)

For the technically curious, I offer this Q&A about the actual notes used in the Psycho excerpt:

Q: What are the notes or note being played during “The Murder” in the famous shower scene (the violin shrieks)? (from Mr. Bunderfull in Chicago Ill. U.S.A.)

A: The highest note in the violins is an E flat, but the second violins are playing an E natural, and lower voices are playing F and G flat. So basically, the highest note is E flat, but everything from E flat to G flat is being heard. (thanks to Gizm, Texas)

If you like this sort of thing, here’s something similar.

This second-best klobasa recently made the news when an astronaut took some up to the International Space Station* (along with some Euclid Beach popcorn balls—but that’s a whole ‘nother story, involving my dad’s side of the family). It turns out the astronaut’s mother is Slovenian, and not just—her maiden name is the same as my mom’s.

Anyway, I knew at the time I was being flip and a little lazy about the food question. I should’ve mentioned my mother-in-law’s soup with manti (little meat dumplings). And the list of four couldn’t accommodate the dishes concocted by my dear wife—for instance, the fennel pasta, the potato and leek soup, the “Ursy caserole,” the pizza rustica (a double-crusted “pie” in the traditional sense), her variation of Ming Tsai‘s fried rice ….

Makes you wonder how often I’m flip and lazy, doesn’t it? Well, keep wondering. (Or not.)
__________
*Correction (2007.01.15): Upon further review, the delicacy carted up to the space station was a package of Azman’s “smokies,” not the traditional (in my view, anyway) Slovenian sausage (which could not, by any stretch, be characterized as “thin”). Also, why give all the publicity to Azman’s? Some folks get their klobasa from Radell’s.

Passions are not natural to mankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences. The ideal, genuine man is calm in joy and calm in pain and sorrow. Passions must quickly pass or else they must be driven out.

Said by Johannes Brahms, in a letter dated 17 October 1857.

Actually, the story goes that I had to be dragged out. “Forceps …” (Is that Dr. Kildare? or Dr. Chamberlen?) Grab that greasy little thing!

My siblings all have nice first-day photos from the nursery at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland: my older brother sleeping soundly, the younger ones just staring vacantly or dozing. My first portrait is a standing joke in the family: eyes glaring at the stupid camera guy, one eyelid puffy like a prizefighter’s, the head slightly lopsided … What a way to start a life!

(Nice pompadour, or whatever it is you call that flip up top.)

Now everything’s just fine—haven’t seen a forceps since.

Corrigendum 2009.10.07: I’ve been meaning to make this correction for some time now. It turns out my older brother and I were born at St. Ann Hospital, not Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where the rest of the gang was born.