Prodigals return, all's right with the world
Noticed yesterday that Doug "Beauty of Gray" Turnbull has been back for a while. He read a lot of books, and reviews them in brief. He also shares some interesting thoughts about getting to democracy in Iraq and -- despite himself -- about the California recall election. Doug plans to post shorter items -- I don't understand, brevity is for the weak -- but at any rate hopefully more often than once every four or five months.

Meanwhile, Gary "Amygdala" Farber explains that there was no transporter malfunction after all -- at least not that kind of transporter malfunction.

Blogger tech news
The Blogger upgrade is very cool. Thanks, Blogger people! I really like 'drafts,' and I look forward to the e-mail feature. All in all, I may spring for one of those Blogger hooded sweatshirts out of gratitude. I still wish I could categorize posts like those effete Moveable Type or Antville sophisticates; guess I'll have to wait a couple more years for that. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:12:00 PM -- |    

 
Holding hands
This has stuck with me from a Frontline piece of last year, "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." It's from an interview with Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, of St. Joseph's Seminary in New York:

The image of the man and woman who held hands as they jumped from the window. ... Do you think about where they might be?

I think they are in the hands of the love that is the ultimate reality about human life, the love of which those two hands held together as they jumped from the window. The love of which those two hands are a revelation, a sign, a brief insight. ... I think they are there. It doesn't matter how one imagines it. Imagine it the way you want. That's the great thing about it, the way you want, but they're holding hands. ...


To me, that image is an inescapable provocation. This gesture, this holding of hands in the midst of that horror, it embodies what Sept. 11 was all about. The image confronts us with the need to make a judgment, a choice. Does it show the ultimate hopelessness of human attempts to survive the power of hatred and death? Or is it an affirmation of a greatness within our humanity itself that somehow shines in the midst of that darkness and contains the hint of a possibility, a power greater than death itself? Which of the two? It's a choice. It's the choice of Sept. 11. ...

"It doesn't matter how one imagines it." Let me hope so with Albacete. And let me someday face my final moments with some of the courage and honor those two people did.

Again, Albacete:

I don't feel it's over even now. You see, there was no closure, as they say. In other deaths, I felt it was time to now affirm life and continue life. But here it is as if it all froze at the moment of death. It is a moment of death that remains. It remains to this day. I knew I had to stand before it as long as it takes to see where this was taking me, because it has changed me, and I know it will continue to change me.

One more thing, and that will be all for today
I wish the December 22 deadline for victims' families to join the federal Victim Compensation Fund could be extended. I doubt I'd cope too well if it happened to me. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:23:00 AM -- |    

 
Future consumers molded, punished
Today's Washington Post business section had two items that caught my attention. The first was "AOL's appeal to youth", which began as follows:

Too busy to read your child a bedtime story?

Not to worry. America Online Inc. wants to come to your rescue, with a new online service for kids to be launched at the end of the month that will, among other things, allow your little one to choose a wholesome bedtime story to be read aloud by the computer.

Yeah, that's a pretty utopian vision. Let's just hook them up to intravenous nourishment and sedation while we're at it. It gets better -- well, worse, actually. It turns out that 8 to 12 year olds -- "tweens" -- are the new marketing battleground:

What is clearer, according to experts, is just how much this young age group matters in the marketplace. Marketers are focusing on reaching tweens online because they influence spending decisions by their parents, and because they are cementing views about brands and competing products themselves.

"It is an interesting segment. That is a time when kids get more independent, and lifelong brand decisions get made," Geraci said. "Marketers have been treating that as a key segment."

Grr. Key segment indeed. Marketers will be treating their own key segments if I can help it.

Then there was the "RIAA's lawsuits meet surprised targets" item. The Recording Industry filed suit against 261 music file-sharers using the "Kazaa" service. I'm not a music file enthusiast -- I'm barely a music listener -- but like some of the people sued, I was under the impression that if Napster folded and Kazaa didn't, Kazaa was somehow doing things kosher. Guess not, at least not enough to keep RIAA from strong-arming people like 12 year old Brianna LaHara. Facing a well-heeled juggernaut, Brianna's family understandably folded:

Yesterday, Brianna's mother, Sylvia Torres, settled with the RIAA for $2,000. In a statement distributed by the music industry trade group, Brianna said: "I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love."

They actually distributed an apology they extorted out of a 12 year old. I actually have sympathy for copyright protection efforts, but if that puts me on the side of outfits like RIAA, the hell with it. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:54:00 PM -- |    

 
German blogger series: expatriates in America and Germany (III)
I've been writing about German bloggers in America so far: Andreas Schaefer, "siebenviertel," Konstantin Klein. Tonight I'll conclude with a profile of an American blogger in Germany.

Before doing so, I'd like to say that I've appreciated the interest in this topic shown by bloggers like Heiko Hebig, Markus ("dormouse dreaming"), and the Bloghaus.net collective.

Also, I want to mention that Armin Grewe, a German now living in England, and Elke Sisco, a German living in Northern California, responded to the interview questions on their own blogs. Do have a look. This series' scope and timing have kept their interesting responses safe from my lengthy treatments.


Scott Hanson: PapaScott
Long as his stay in the U.S. has been, Klein has nothing on Scott Hanson, a Minnesotan who has lived in the Hamburg area with his German wife (congratulations on their 20th anniversary last week!) since 1990, with son Christopher joining the family in 1998. Dauntingly, "only my wife could speak the language."

Thinking about the move to Germany recently, Scott concluded they might not have done it under the current economic circumstances; luckily, it turned out to be a great opportunity for his wife, who works for a major U.S. multinational company now well established in Germany. Scott also thrived, finding work as a systems administrator. With a house and a child in Germany, Scott writes it's likely the family will be staying there for the forseeable future: "We wanted to stay for 5 years. We're now on 13."

Responding to whether he felt "in touch" with either country, Scott said,

If you mean do I feel at home in both countries, then yes, but I do not feel like a native of either country. I'm somewhere in between. I can understand both countries, but I can't really feel for either one.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of American bones in Scott's body: he misses baseball a lot, and wouldn't mind coming across a highlights video of the Twins-Braves 1991 World Series.*

Like several other expatriate bloggers I corresponded with, Scott makes the point that it's hard to judge what the effect of living "abroad" is on one's politics or opinions:

My thinking on politics has become more detached and analytical, but I can't say whether that's because of living abroad or just becoming more mature.

The issues of affinity and politics became intertwined after 9/11. Scott's blog archives are arranged by month, and the September, 2001 file makes for some poignant reading:

5 September, Don't Make Me Go (Two year old son gets a replacement nanny for the first time) [...]
9 September, Rainy Weekend [...]
12 September, The Day the Earth Stood Still: ...Mama called from her car. She had caught the tail end of a news report on the radio, and couldn't believe what she thought she had heard.
I decided to leave work early, even though I had started late. Outside the rain was a deluge, the gutters were flooding, traffic was slow. NDR4 radio was reporting what they could see on TV, what the correspondent in NY could see out the window, the towers were collapsing, debate in the Bundestag was cancelled, members of parliament were milling together with visitors in the lobby watching the news broadcasts.
Mama was home, the television offered pictures but no new information. Christopher was hyperactive, totally beside himself, as if he were breathing the tension in the air. Our satellite dish is on the fritz, can't get CNN at all, have to rely on the main stations. Chancellor Schroeder spoke of 'unqualified solidarity' with the US, which made me feel reassured. Otherwise I just feel numb. I miss an eloqent President, who can express what I and the nation must feel, but cannot put into words.
Mama shed some tears. Perhaps she had started to fathom what has happened. I haven't. Not yet. [...]

27 September, Gonna Go For A Whirl: ... We use the word "war" quite often to mean a monumental task. The war on crime. The war on drugs. German doesn't seem to use "Krieg" in this way. Then there is the American phrase "moral equivalent of war". There's no German equivalent, I don't think, no phrase for "moral equivalent of the worst possible moral outcome". So when American speak of a new "war", it could very well be misunderstood.

Not at all to be judgmental about it: despite so clearly feeling the impact of 9/11 -- as so many Europeans did – Scott began to part ways early on with most Americans in his reactions to and what to do about the attacks.

It seems like Scott has in part adopted (or has maybe long embraced) the skepticism about any war that seems to underly much European public opinion. Coming out of a place like Hamburg – brutally and tragically all but annihilated during World War II – that's an understandable position, if not one that could be “ausschlaggebend” (determinative) for Americans.**

In our final correspondence about this piece, Scott points out he came to similar conclusions himself by early 2002:

Visiting the States last month, it was quickly apparent that the effect of 9/11 on ordinary people was much deeper than I had imagined. [...]

For me, 9/11 did not change my world. ... after the shock and horror was gone, my view of the world had not changed. Such an event was possible. [...]

Maybe [the terrorists] knew what I just realized: that the United States was much more vulnerable [than their base of operations in Hamburg], and that the impact of an attack there would be much deeper.

Scott has had interesting things to say about the differences between Europe and America -- or at least points of departure in thinking about them. Back in 2000 -- this is one of the longest running blogs I know of -- Scott wrote:

After nearly 10 years of being an expatriate (expatriatism?), I should certainly have some interesting views on the subject. But maybe I don't. 10 years is a long time, and maybe the strangeness of my adopted culture is no longer strange to me, and my memories of life in the US are so old that they are no longer valid. I don't know. I personally find the similarities between Europe and America to be more interesting than the differences. [...]

You can't generalize. Simple broad statements are simply not true, and cannot explain the details of your experience in a new culture.
You have to generalize. But one has to start someplace. The only way to begin to make sense of a new culture is to start with clichés (which usually contain some truth) and compare them to what you are actually experiencing. [...]
Language is nothing. And everything. Americans are not used to hearing conversations they don't understand. One can learn and survive in a culture without the language, but learning the language will improve your point of view.

A thematic – not constant, but frequent -- concern with German-American communication and understanding is what connects each of the four blogs I’ve mentioned. I think Scott Hanson’s blog -- like the other bloggers discussed here – is a new kind of example of what Walter Russell Mead calls "popular foreign policy" in his recent book Special Providence.

Among other things, Mead has meant by this ordinary/extraordinary people taking politics and foreign affairs personally and into their own hands; people writing about their native or adopted countries to eachother.** Bloggers like Hanson, Klein, Schaefer and siebenviertel are, in a way, new kinds of foreign correspondents and envoys -- self-selected for travel, a certain openness, and the desire to write about it for the rest of us. They're translating not just words for their readers, but worlds.



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* Widely considered one of the best baseball World Series ever played. Well, by me anyway. Yes, including those Reds-Red Sox and Diamondbacks-Yankees deals.
** I’m probably taking some liberties with Mead’s ideas here. Mead writes about more concrete examples, like the effect American missionaries to Asia had on American foreign policy or that of American settlers of the early frontier: creating opinions and/or facts on the ground that the U.S. government was obliged to consider. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:35:00 PM -- |