PORTABLE CITIZENSHIP

When the going gets tough – the tough get going – somewhere else! There is an enormous gap between mythology and reality. The mythology is that immigrants come to your country for a new life, for a life of freedom after the oppression of their native land. A new life free from fear. A life in a free country where democratic principles rise above everything. Those brave and noble words encapsulate what has been one of the great myths of immigrant behaviour.

Of course, it is true that many people flee oppression. It is also true that many people, cynics will say most people, come for economic advantage.

In this country we had what were called “the astronauts.” Like space travelers they shuttled between homes. It was a label applied to many Hong Kong Chinese who could afford to “buy” Canadian citizenship by investing here and providing jobs. Did that make them Canadians? Did that make them honour and praise our democratic traditions, our institutions, our sense of tolerance, our health care system? No it did not. Canada was an address of convenience. They would ship their children here to attend school, have a Canadian address, but fly between Canada and Hong Kong where their real interests were. The principal reason for it was uncertainty about the future of the once-British colony.

I am prompted to write this, not because of my lingering distaste for “portable” citizenship, like the Lebanese whose Canadian citizenship allowed them to complain that ”their” government was not acting quickly enough to evacuate them from their real home – Lebanon, which had erupted in civil war.

Those are passing irritations. What prompted this item is the news that thousands are fleeing the “Celtic Tiger” the once miraculously prosperous Ireland. They came from all over Europe to cash in on the new prosperity and the minute it started to sink – they were off and running. Even more glaringly obvious is the current “brain drain” exodus from the United States. According to a recent article in USA Today there are hundreds, maybe thousands of highly skilled people, mostly Indian and Chinese who are fleeing the downturn in America and running to their homelands for better jobs. I don’t blame anyone for wanted to be where the opportunity is, but I do blame the hype and patriotic drivel that keeps telling us how glad these people are to come to the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Even more irritating, is how these portable citizens proclaim their love of their new country – until – until they can make more elsewhere.

Closer to home, will you try to persuade me that the exodus of doctors from this country, the exodus of nurses and health technicians, was anything but a flight to where there was more money, and a complete disregard for the deeper sense of being Canadian in Canada?

I am not flag-waving. I am simply looking around me at the truth: survival comes first. And in the words of Cuba Gooding in that great movie: “Show me the money.”

BEING A GOOD (?) HOUSE GUEST

Mark Kolke has asked me to do a piece about being a good house guest. He knows, as do many others, that my wife and I are "home exchangers." We travel very inexpensively, but even more, we get to be guests in someone else's home, and we get to know the neighbours and the local shopping in a way no hotel or resort guest can.

We are just back from another jaunt and the experience was from wonderful to horrid.
Wonderful was to reacquaint with a man in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had already done an exchange. He and his wife came to Toronto and spent two weeks at our place. Unfortunately, we were also away, so we never met. But when we returned to take up our part of the exchange, he and his wife "hosted" us. Meaning: we visited as guests while they were in residence. Being a house "guest" instead of a casual visitor has many advantages. Aside from the obvious - getting to know your hosts, they will take you to visit places you might never have found on your own. There was an emergency. My wife developed an infection requiring a trip to the emergency. They took us. They sat with us. It was as near to being home as one could get. To add to the pleasure, she got up every morning to go to her gym, but also to make hot oatmeal for us. Long story with a bittersweet ending: we were heading south to visit a cousin in beautiful Asheville. I called him, learned his wife had died last December, but that he would be delighted to have us visit with him. The only "price" we had to pay was that I cooked. No problem - it's a joyous experience for me, and he needed it because his wife did all the cooking. Her departure left him helpless in the kitchen. We shared a dinner of a butterflied chicken I make. He was so impressed he asked me to do dinner for neighbours who have been generous to him. I did. I trotted out a sumptuous menu of veal Cordon Bleu and a mushroom/onion risotto. He was delighted, and we met three engaging people, one of whom took us on an art tour of Charlotte.

This almost always happens. In Holland we are welcomed regularly by a couple in The Hague. In Paris we4 have access to a studio apartment in the Porte Maillot district.
In Barcelona a toung couple hosted us in their apartment and when we were robbed, lent us 500 Euro until we could get replacement credit cards and passports.

This week a couple from Stockholm who had previously stayed in our place visited us for the day. They took us to lunch. I responded with a dinner of turkey cacciatore.
We'll be in Stockholm next June. Next week a couple from Scotland will spend most of the week with us. Two years ago they hosted us in Aberdeen where I cooked for them. They had never had French toast. They called it "fried bread," a dish well-known to them.

All these details are simply a background look at the joy of being a special kind of house guest or host. It is enriching and I get a chance to show off in the kitchen.

It doesn't always work out as well. Our trip to Asheville was marred by a kind of jarring meeting with a long lost cousin. I may have said the wrong things but she responded with her own challenge. It was a tense three days, eased a bit by being able to cook and to have civilized conversation. Ironically, Asheville was the boyhood home of Thomas Wolfe, and my visit there proved Wolfe was right: You Can't Go Home Again. I apologized but it was not enough.

So all house guesting does not work out perfectly. Truthfully though, with all the tension, I would not have missed the visit for anything.

It is trivial of me I suppose to quote (or paraphrase) the famous: "house guests are like fish. if they stay too long they start to smell."

NOT SO "LOOKINg Ahead."

Anyone over 60 will tell you, if they themselves are aware of it, that nostalgia for "the way things used to be" can overwhelm all your judgements.

So, instead of "Looking Ahead," I am casting a sorrowful glance over my shoulder and whining about "how things used to be."

Is it a kind of overblown self-importance that is expressed by the phone message: "I'm either out of the office, away from my desk, or on another call. Please leave...etc.."

Dammit - whatever happened to the common courtesy of answering your phone? Where does this "busy-man" attitude come from? I even have one friend who never, ever answers the phone. The service picks it up and within a short time I get a call "I was on another line" or some such other lame excuse.

Maybe it's a kind of 21st century urban plague. I didn't grow up with what we see commonly on movie and TV screens. Someone is making an urgent call and of course, gets an answering machine. The picture cuts to the person who is being called listening to the frustrated caller holler: "Pick up, come on pick up. I know you're there."

The plague is aggravated by a device that will show you who is calling so you can deign not to pick up or be simply too busy, unless of course it is a telemarketer, in which case their identity is blocked.

Is it too much technology? Is it too much real indifference? Or is it, as I said earlier, just an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

I am held captive by a banking system that is sometimes absurd. Like millions of you, I carry a line of credit. Because it is a "secured" line, I can't just take money willy-nilly or make any market transcations without first getting permission.
I can't even withdraw earning from my brokerage account, without contacting my account person. That's where the fun begins. "Hello - this is (name) at (bank name)
\I am unable to take your call etc.../or - I am away from the office until (date) Please contact (another name and phone number) and they will be able to assist you. You guessed it, the alternate contact also is either out of the office or away from her desk...etc.."

How anyone gets anything done is quite beyond me. I know I know, you will say "If you sit by your desk trying to get work done and you are interrupted contstantly etc..."

Well my forward looking friends, remember when someone, a real person, would answer the phone with a cheerful "Hello this is (name) office. Can I help you?"
(While I'm carping, who even told people it was more polite to say MAY I help you. My answer would be, I wouldn't have called unless I thought you could help me, which means that CAN I help you is appropriate. The answer to MAY I help you is obvious: my very phone call entitles you to help me, so asking "may I" is stupid.)

Two of my grandsons intend to follow their father, a successful marketing guru into college business courses. Isn't anyone trying to be a poet anymore?

They will, without question or demurral, enter a world of business where a machine allows you to duck answering your phone.

I'm convinced that technology has not in many ways, been our saviour. It only seems to be more efficient. What it does it add another layer to the already heavily layered protocol of going from point A to point B, the process of starting with a problem and going directly to a solution. Too much detail just doesn't hack it. Look if you will, at Occam's Law. Essentially it says that you will get there faster if you strip away all the unnecessary baggage. But phone answering machines (and most people) have never heard of Occam.

JUST ANOTHER MYTH

There is what remains of a strip mall. The movie house has nothing on the marquee, but if you venture inside there seems to be life. There is a dollar store. There is a Chinese buffet. The rest is derelict. A few cars occupy a large space whose ambitions vanished years ago. It is mostly derelict. It is like the set of The Last Picture Show.

But it is 2009 and I am in Fredonia, New York, a village about an hour west of Buffalo on the Thruway. We stay at a Day’s Inn that is trying hard but has seen better days. There is that slightly damp, mildewy aroma in the hallways and in the room there is evidence of a worn carpet that has been covered over.
It is America in decay. Until…
Until you head into town, It is not what you’d call “bustling” but there seems to be life. There are shops and banks and a few people in the streets. The village, like so many relics of the past, abounds iu luxurious looking frame homes, wrap-around porches and a few cupolas here and there. The biggest mansion is the funeral home. Shirley asks me how I’d like to live in a small town. She knows the answer.

But this is not just a small town. It is a relic. It is a personification of what the most ardent Republicans (like Sarah Palin) speak of as the “real” America. It is the epitome of the great myth of “small town folks.” You know the routine: “ ‘round here everybody knows everybody else. People smile and say hello in the street.” That again is mythic. The fact is that small town folks are friendly enough with each other. A newcomer is often shunned with suspicion as someone “from away.” You can die of loneliness in a small town unless your grandfather was born there. During the 50s and 60s urbanites moved to ex-urbia in search of a new kind of peace. I’m not talking about suburbanites who moved to the boonies because you could get so much more house for your money. (The dream has soured as suburban taxes soar, highways gridlock gets worse, and the daily commute keeps you from your family for about three hours a day, not to mention the cost of the second car and the reality that if you have to buy anything at all you have to drive to get t.)
So it is not the recession that is turning places into ghost towns. It is the new urban reality. Hate it you might, but Toronto is the 2nd biggest high rise condo city in North America – next tp New York. More and more people want to walk to work and to restaurants, and to supermarkets. Downtown is “where it’s at.”

GOD BLESS AMERICA

I love Americans – most of them. I love America – most of it. That country has given the world more Nobel Prize winners I think, than any other country in the world. There are more people in institutions of higher learning than any other country in the world. Henry Ford invented the assembly line and revolutionized manufacturing. The New York Times is one of the greatest papers in the world. Those are not just fanciful or mythic notions – those are facts.

But there is a mythic America, a country that exists in a world of boosterism and over-the-top claims and self-praising ideas. That I can only giggle at, and that giggle is not friendly. Example: “Americans are the most optimistic people in the world.” That statement was made during a discussion about the future of America. Two scholarly experts said it on Public Broadcasting's Jim Lehrer News Report. Where did this man, an obviously well informed, well-read intellectual – get his information? It is part of the American myth, the belief Americans have in themselves.

Americans are easily, among developed nations the most isolated from reality of any people in any other country. They characteristically know little, and care less, about other countries and other people, unless they happen to be involved in some kind of “nation-building” – often described as a “battle for the hearts and minds of (fill in the country.)”

So I ask, where, statistically can they back this wild statement up? Has anyone done an optimist study comparing a cross section of Americans against a similar group of Canadians of Romanians or Frenchmen? They live in a world surrounded by uniquely American superlatives – dreamed up without proof – to reinforce the idea that, after all, where else would anyone in the world want to live?

During the current recession, with unemployment approaching 10% and hope for several tens of millions of American people fading fast, I heard Barack Obama say something like:“Americans are the hardest working people in the world!” He said it witha straight face. I would not be one to differ. Could I say that Americans are NOT the hardest working people in the world?” Who knows? Politicians currying favour will use thus kind of mindless hyperbole. But again, the question I ask is: had anyone done a “hard-work” study to determine whether or not the “fact” is true? Are they harder working than say – the Japanese? How about the millions virtually chained to machines in China producing the world’s all-time greatest volume of consumer goods? How about Asian students who lead in just about every category at schools and universities in Canada?

It beats me. In the next few days I will be taking an extended trip into the U.S., heading for a few days with a friend in Charlotte North Carolina, one of America’s most advanced and progressive boom towns. From there to the slightly chic and artsy, intellectual, picturesque city of Asheville, grandly nestled in the Blue Ridge. Then a return to home with a stop in Cleveland, one of the cities in America that is relentlessly shrinking but has some of the most astonishingly good cultural facilities in the world!

I have a lot of time for what is good in that country. I have a lot of feeling for their sense of being misunderstood. I only wish they would stop the bugle-blaring fanfares for levels of accomplishment that exist only in fantasy.

And finally, I must not, will not, add by railing against their indifference to Canada. They don’t even really know we’re here. Not one American in a hundred knows that we are their largest supplier of energy – not as they would believe – Venezuela or the Middle East.

Besides, they gave us Costco. That’s enough to love them for.

ME? RACIST???

A nineteen year old neighbourhood favourite was shot dead the other day in downtown Toronto, a few blocks from where I live. Today there is a small shrine – the usual flowers piled up at the site of the shooting. The neighbours remember the boy as always smiling and loving to dance and play basketball. There were the usual comments about “too many guns on the street.” So we mourn again. Trouble is – we lay blame in the wrong place.

Bill Clinton said it best a few years ago. Referring to racial tensions in America, he said (and I paraphrase) that it is not a question of race, but a question of class. Giving the lie to the red-neck notion that somehow race is an element inherent in a certain kind of behaviour. In grotesque studies like “eugenics” there have been so-called scientists who have examined certain kinds of aberrant behaviour and its correlation to race. Everything from sexual promiscuity to testosterone gunplay. In fact, and I don’t remember who said it but it was an prominent and respected social scientist, that the most dangerous animal on Earth was a nineteen year old inner city black man. And he did not mean that colour had anything to do with it. He was just making a statistical comment about the realities if life in America.

But I believe Clinton nailed it when he set aside the idea of trace-based behaviour. So did Studs Terkel in his book “Race” which was all about the racial divide in Chicago.

It becomes cultural, economic, and environmental – none of which are in any way genetic.

Sadly, some of the black population will be predictably up in arms, claiming racial profiling or something like that. The police will run for cover and insist that they do not do that, and except for increased vigilance in dangerous areas, are not making racial judgments.

The election of Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new day of tolerance and understanding, and perhaps most important, a new age of black self-esteem in America.

But nothing changes. In cultures where gangs prevail, where drugs are rampant, where guns are a phallic extension of testosterone, someone will be shot. I am no sociologist so I do not pretend to understand the dynamic of the disenfranchised, or the marginal. The fact still is, that for whatever reason (some of them sadly racially motivated) we marginalize certain groups. Those groups are characterized as below average in school, lacking vocational skills, and not having the right to what the general population conceives as fulfillable aspirations. Whew – that’s a long psycho-babble.

Remember too that many of the families living in Toronto today have come from another geographic culture where the gun was power, and where your chances of being unemployed were high, and being under-employed even higher.

My greatest concern is for the blacks who personally, often privately, cringe when they read of a street crime, hoping that it will not involve any of them. But it does. Like the person who is supposed to have seen the shooting and will be in horrible fear that he, only because of what he saw, could be next.

I have no idea what to say or what to do. I am, because I am white, suspect. And sadly, because I am also a Jew, I hear the kind of smug “I-climbed-out-of-the-ghetto-why-can’t-they?” utterances from many of my own people. I am privileged. The “others” are not. It has nothing to do with my ability to climb out of whatever hole I may have been in. It has to do with having been marginalized myself, but outgrowing the problem, I have had my own measure of success and it has been free of any kind of lawlessness.

The answers can’t come from me, or our well-meaning but in this case, impotent mayor, who says there are larger social problems to be dealt with. Of course there are. But where do we go from the “mea culpa” admission of our own complicity?

Enough. I am sorry. We all are sorry. It should not happen in a civil society.

A MATTER OF OPINION #2

I know. I know. I’m supposed to be “looking ahead.” That means I don’t spend time being an old fogy who knows that the current generation is going to hell in a hand-held device. Looking ahead means I should be current, savvy, cool, and ready to “get with it.” (Do they still use that expression?)

But, under the heading “a matter of opinion,” I pontificate from the height of age and experience, not to mention anger, impatience. And intolerance of almost everything I see around me. But I can’t resist.

Today, again, I saw a 20-something so ear-glued to her (it could equally apply to a “he”) that she was oblivious of everything around her. Sort of spaced out on meaningless chatter. The devotion to high tech communication is not what bothers me; it is that she crossed a road without looking, solidly encased in her cell phone conversation.

What bothers me most is the question: do any of these self-absorbed people ever, ever, ever read the news or watch it on TV? Are any of them mindful of the danger of being pre-occupied? Did any of them, read or hear the tragic story of a young woman who was killed by a truck – a truck she ran into because she was crossing the road talking on her cellphone and oblivious to everything around her?

Lately there have been more and more stories about preoccupation. You’re so busy doing something you don’t see what’s going on around you. That’s not just lack of concentration, that’s oblivion. A day does not go by that I see someone walking through an intersection totally comatose on a cell phone. I know that the pedestrian has the right of way, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to look both ways – I’d settle for looking one way. I won’t settle for no looking.

The question is of course, if the Province joins the growing number of jurisdictions who have laws against driving while on the phone, would there also be a law about jay-walking while on the phone?

It would be too easy to simply sigh and say something like: “The young think they are bulletproof and immortal.” Which is why crossing the road talking on a phone can be just as dangerous as the new fad of “car surfing,” which is a suicidal way to get on You Tube. If you missed all the stories about that kind of surfing” wake up!

A MATTER OF OPINION

I hope my son-in-law doesn’t read this because I am going to quote him (as nearly as I can remember.)
“Tattoos are a lifestyle choice. I don’t think they’re either good or bad.” That comment ism one of the reasons I like him, married to me daughter for more than 20 years. He is a very strong alpha male with very strongly voiced views. But he seems, in so many ways, to be perfectly non-judgmental. “What will be will be,” he often says. You would think that someone with such an easy-going attitude might be something of an idler. Far from it. He is enormously successful in his field of marketing, and enjoys the confidence (and fees) of some large companies.

But this is not about him. That would be embarrass him. It is about me and my exactly opposite view: judgmental. I groan when I see an arm covered in gaudy tattoos, especially on an otherwise good-looking young woman. My wife groans with me.

Are we neo-phobes? Are we younger-generation-bashers? Are we smug old fogies sneering at “kids today?” Are we, because of our many years of experience, entitled to make judgments? In places like China the elderly are esteemed – the older they are, the most esteem seems to flow. In our culture, if we are old enough to remember The Beatles arrival in America, we are irrelevant. That we don’t care for tattoos (abhor them in fact) is a matter of no concern to the self-decorated twits who believe that they are the height of fashion with their faux barbed wire armlets and slithering snakes and cute little butterflies adorning deliciously hidden parts of the anatomy.
What we always say, echoed perhaps by others of our generation is: style is one thing, but changeless style is quite another. What is chic today is “so yesterday” tomorrow. You can live with green hair and black nail polish because it will go away as soon as the style changes. No so the tattoo. It is an indelible thing, and as it fades over the years becomes even less attractive.

In years to come your tattoo will identify you as a member of the “me generation” of the 2000s. Just as when I see a man with a pony tail – the top of the head nearly bald, the colour grey, clinging to his own reminder of the years when we “let it all hang out,” the Woodstock and Bob Dylan years. The protests. The musical “Hair.” The conversation that began with: “What’s your sign?”

So it is that every generation is marked by its style. But the tattoo is forever. One day, just as I am today’s old fogy, you know-it-all kids with the tattoos, will be identified as old fogys, identified by the mark that identifies you permanently as a member of the forgotten past.