"Sea of Otherness"

If there were a phrase that best describes the feeling of awkward self-awareness one has at the realization that you're in a truly foreign place, it must be Carl Hoffman's description of his being planted in a "sea of otherness" while traveling on a ferry in Indonesia where white men were curious but scarce commodities. His book called "The Lunatic Express" is a must-read for all Urban Nomads!
First of all, I think that the desire to discover the world in its unperturbed, untainted, unspoiled state is at the heart of everyone who has had that peripatetic flame spark inside of them. Well Carl took that a couple steps further than most. He didn't want to be a tourist or anything like that. He wanted to be a traveler. To be among the poorest, the destitute, the least affected by society. He wanted to experience the "deathtraps" of overcrowded ferries and unsafe airlines. He wanted to feel the sweat of his neighbors lying side by side like sardines on linoleum platforms while hundreds slept on boats with little more than small portholes for air. In fact the book's subtitle conveys his goal: "Discovering the World ...via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains and Planes."  What Carl Hoffman did was decide to seek out the most statistically dangerous places in the world and write about them.  It makes a great read.
There is a strange and odd relationship I have to this Lunatic Express. The name "The Lunatic Express" was first given to the railway in East Africa that once linked Uganda to the Indian Ocean city of Mombasa in Kenya, or British East Africa as it was known then. It was thought to be the ultimate folly of imperialism by its detractors --  to think that the colonialists could build such a rail system in the midst of warring tribes, marauding lions, ravines, famine, lack of funds -- you name it. But actually the Brits did it. It's a feat of ingenuity and persistence.  But there is another reason for the name and I came to know why on a very personal basis. A visitation, you might say. Perhaps by a "lunatic." In the early 1980s my sister and I had the pleasure of going on safari in Africa. We were told we must take the train from Nairobi to Mombasa. It would be unlike anything we had ever experienced. Well, if truth be told, one detail had been left out: that the train was also known as the "Haunted Train to Mombasa." The building of the railroad had a storied past, including the massacre of some 500 Maasai and attacks by warring Nandi. Many felt the Brits had no right to tear across the land of the tribesmen. It was controversial then and it has remained a bit of a mystery since. To this day, stories of dead Maasai workers on the train haunting passengers, of bells ringing in the middle of the night, of windows rattling and unscheduled stops are commonplace. All I can say is that night was unlike any other…and it certainly was lunacy!

Pass it on...

Eight LatAm Nations: Shut the F… Up!

Are eight Latin American nations right in telling the US to shove it or are they taking advantage of an unfortunate situation and using it to their benefit?


What if we told Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru that we wouldn't stand for their immigration policies?  That Napoleonic law was unjust and we just would stop doing business with them unless they released all those held for suspicion without cause or overturned their Napoleonic code of justice and created systems where an accused needed to be found guilty rather than presumed guilty? 


As much as this pains me, and it does, to say this: they have no right to demand this unless and until they accord similar accommodations for US workers who want to work in their countries. Mexico says the Arizona law would lead to racial profiling and hinder trade, tourism and the fight against drug trafficking. 


Come on. Mexicans in Mexico against racial profiling? Talk about calling a kettle black. Mexico has a long-standing caste system dating from colonial times. OK. I know the overt caste systems have been overturned by legislation, but that does not mean that social prejudices and economic exploitation are not present.  Even though overt racial oppression is no longer permissible by law, people still hold personal opinions about members of other races based upon preconceived notions.


Fact: for three years, working predominantly in Mexico City, I was called "Gringa" every single day. Don't tell me I wasn't subject to racial profiling. I was told point-blank in Mexico that I was a "woman" so I shouldn't possibly think about submitting my CV for a position for which I was qualified.  Those who do menial labor are called "negros" " negritos" and other names based on racial profiling. Mulattos and mestizos may not be "legal" terms of codification anymore, but they are certainly used.


Racial profiling IS illegal in the United States. The Arizona law does indeed open that State up to all sorts of opposition, legal and other…but the point is:  Go Away. Let us handle matters in our own house, thank you. I challenge those eight nations to take a long, hard look at their own immigration and labor policies before condemning other sovereign nations and threatening about trade.

Sarah Palin and Refudiation

"Peaceful Muslims,"  Mrs. Palin implored this week "refudiate…" Refuse? Refute? Repudiate?
Nope. Re-fu-di-ate. As in this sentence posted on Twitter: "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate."
Mrs. Malaprop didn't just stop there. Nooooo.  When her Tweet became a viral laugh to thousands of Tweeters, she attempted to correct it by using the word "refute" in place of repudiate, which actually was imploring those "peace-loving Muslims" to prove their brethren wrong. That wasn't right either…so she took down the comment altogether. 
Ahhh, it's comforting and nice to see history continuing.  Just when I was missing the good old days of Dan Quayle claiming "I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican"  came W Bush and his strategerizing.
The way I see it, Palin is rightfully claiming her place in Republican history. Or should I say Republican herstory? Seems more fitting. By refudiating the English language, Palin has drawn her line in the sand.  Or put her best foot in the sand. Or something like that.

The Other Side of Globalization

I am passing on a portion of an article I read today online on Business Insider. 

"Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects.  It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations.  The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world.  After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do the same job?  The world is fundamentally changing.  Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money.  Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool. "

I wanted to add that in the '80s, when those of us who were in college, were studying globalization, our antidote to this was to seek jobs internationally, thus giving rise to the culture of Urban Nomads. No question that we consider ourselves part of that "global labor pool." The problem is the older we get (most of us are now reaching or have hit our 50s), the more experience we carry, the less relevant we become to those increasingly in charge. The more overlooked and unemployed we become.

So not only is the "middle class" in trouble, but the aging group -- regardless of class -- is becoming a burden.

In essence our globalization and worldliness has screwed us out of enjoying the lives we expected to have but has made us healthy enough to live longer and wise enough to know we will have to live through it and adjust. 

Talk about backfiring!

Barbarity Beware!

The news that a woman, an "accused" adulterer, would not be stoned to death in Iran has been widely headlined as "good news." But here's the reality:  this 43 year old widow, who was found guilty of adultery, allegedly committed the crime after her husband was murdered. And now, after a much heralded international plea from Hollywood to Bollywood, news today has been released that the government will not seek to stone her. 


This woman, a mother, who has been imprisoned since 2006 for the crime of having sex outside of her marriage, even though she was widowed, will in all probability still die at the hands of the government. The Iranian state has not said it would release her nor did it clarify that it would not seek execution of another kind. 


International human rights activists seem momentarily relieved. The stoning is stayed. One US Embassy worker said, "Stoning, as a means of execution, is tantamount to torture. It's barbaric and an abhorrent act."  But here's what I am questioning:  shouldn't the international community be fighting against execution as a consequence of sex outside of marriage?? It seems to me that the barbarity lies in the execution -- whether by stoning, shooting, injection or firing squad. 


Let's start calling things as they really are:  killing adults for consensual sex is barbaric any place, at any time. The fact is that even the Koran, according to Islamic educators, does not call for stoning. It does call for lashing, for punishment, if there are actual witnesses to the act of penetration. In Mrs. Ashtiani's case, there were no witnesses, just a judge who seems to have had a grudge against her. And she has already lived through the punishment of 100 lashes for her alleged crime.


Legal, secular codes getting mixed up with religious law is the tricky business that fundamental Islamists, jihadists and other radical hardliners use to push their agendae forward and to rationalize their barbaric acts of domestic, gender and international terrorism.  They need to be stopped. Consensual sex is not an executable crime. It is a crime of the heart, perhaps. A crime of dishonoring a marital pledge. In fact, it has no place as a crime of the state at all.

Flying Cars and Much More...

Flying cars. Apple's new phone sucks. Especially if you're a left-hander and therefore you naturally cover up the antenna. Congress votes down the bill to extend unemployment benefits to those collecting.

So, maybe you can fly, but you'll be hard pressed to get a signal to tell your buddy about it and you won't have any more cash cause the funds are all dried up and you still can't find a job. That's what's happening in our world today, at this very moment.

Not so very long ago,  we watched the Jetsons and our dreams were propelled toward a future that would include treadmills for dogs and flying cars. In that futuristic world, we never saw poverty. We had supposedly figured out how to feed the hungry, create jobs for all and maintain family life that included everything imaginable. Possibility.

The possibilities that exist in today's world seem to be closer at hand for those in the top 1% of the world. For the rest, there is a sheen of hopelessness that exists. Shoddy products abound. Unemployment rages on. Jobless statistics vastly underestimate reality and discount the hundreds of thousands of people who have gone beyond their unemployment benefits and are still without work. Employers look not for longevity but cost savings; not for innovation, but for meeting the status quo.

Undeniably we are at a low point. The only way out is to persevere. As the Brits said during WWII "Keep Calm and Carry On."

I'll just keep that lovely image of flying cars in my mind's eye and take a deep breath.