Frank is Emptiness

December 11th, 2018

There was a lot of talk at the immigration conference. Actually, it was almost all talk. Some of it was utter nonsense. Some of it was profound. The flow of words was like a roaring river, too swift to follow. I tried to catch a few words, a few phrases. I wrote down the words that caught my ear and touched my heart. I will share at least of them now.

“Do you know what ‘Antisemitism’ means? It means: ‘They are coming to get you too!”

A young woman from Brooklyn said those words while part of panel discussion on bigotry. She rakishly wore a fedora on her head, and she often spouted old school, Marxist slogans. However, in this case, her words were totally right on. She explained that Jews have been targeted by white nationalists because the Jews consistently support the rights of immigrants. The Jews get it. They know. I have noticed this myself. When I have asked for help with immigrants, my Jewish friends have always shown a great deal of interest. It’s in their history. It’s in their DNA. They understand that, if we fail to support those who are now being oppressed, our turn will come.

This idea is for me best expressed by Martin Niemöller, who was not a Jew, but who fought fiercely against the injustices of Hitler’s Third Reich. He said,

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

When I think about why I am involved with the work to protect immigrants, I think of the words of Pastor Niemöller. I have an immigrant wife. Sure, she has a green card, but what does that really mean? With Trump in office, when will they come for her? When will they come for me?

 

 

December 9th, 2018

I met way too many people at the NIIC (National Immigrant Integration Conference). By the end of the first day, I had already encountered too many faces, too many names, and too many stories. I know that I will forget almost all of these men and women. They will become a blur in my mind. That can’t be helped. However, I will try to describe some of them before my memory gets too muddled.

The conference seemed designed to throw the participants into a swirling mix. Every session rushed immediately upon the heels of the last one. Even the meals were incorporated into plenary meetings. There was no dead time. “Dead time” is probably the wrong term for me to use. Maybe I need to say “time for living”. There was seldom, if ever, a pause in the action, a quiet moment. There was not any time set aside for people to just hang out and learn about each other. For me, this meant that most of my contacts resulted in pathetically shallow relationships. It was always:

“Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you do?”

“Next!”

I truly hate that. I would rather only meet a few people, with the opportunity to understand them a bit, than meet a hundred persons and not really know them at all.

Why was it that way? I don’t know. Maybe the organizers of the conference thought that they needed to give everybody maximum exposure to all the information available about immigration issues. I can understand that, but they could have opened up some time for  interaction between individuals. Honestly, there were many really good programs at the conference. I readily admit that, and I am grateful for those sessions. It’s just that, at least for me, it takes time to get to know someone. The time I needed to do that was not available.

Enough bitching. I need to remember some people. Be advised that each of my descriptions is at best a snapshot. It would be a lie to say that I know any of these people well. All I know is that each person made an impression on me, and I need to write down each impression before it fades.

Malik: He’s an open, extroverted man with a ready smile. He likes to crack a joke and shake a hand. Malik a big black man from Ohio with whom I could somehow be totally honest. I know that he works at the YMCA (as did several other people at the conference), but I don’t really know what he does in particular. I know that he’s Muslim, but that doesn’t matter much to me. He’s more than just his religion. He mentioned it to me in an offhand sort of way: “I hope that you count me among your Muslim friends.” Malik is currently re-reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. It’s a book worth re-reading. For reasons beyond my understanding we hit it off. We traded contact information, but that doesn’t mean anything. Our lives collided for a few moments, and now that’s done. Or maybe it’s not.

Khara: I met Khara at breakfast on the morning of the second day of the conference. We stood together at a table outside the main ballroom. He is short, slight man, easy to miss in a crowd. Khara is from Bhutan. He was once in a refugee camp in Nepal, and now he helps refugees in Pittsburgh. Khara listens. He is comfortable with silence. I admire that. Khara found refugees in Pittsburgh that were already cooperating in an informal sort of way. Khara brought these refugees together in to classes to learn English and to find ways to become part of the larger community. The man works in a quiet, subtle way.

John: He is a big man with a crew cut that is going grey. He looks military, but I’m not sure that he is. John harks from Richmond, Virginia. He helps run a refugee resettlement program. He has a southern vibe that I know very well. His program is slowly diminishing under the current regime in the White House. We found time to just sit and talk. I spoke to him about writing and about the power of stories. He told me about his support for people coming from other parts of the world. The man does very good work. I hope that he can keep doing it.

Djimet: I met this man during one of the short breaks. He was standing against a wall, talking on his phone. Djimet is tall, lean, with skin dark as ebony. I asked him where he as from. He answered solemnly,

“I am from Chad.”

“No, I meant ‘where do you work’. So, where’s that?”

He laughed, “Portland, man.”

Djimet proceeded to tell me about his work trying to mediate between refugee communities that can’t stand each other (think Croat vs. Serb). He is trying to settle differences between diverse immigrant groups from eastern Europe who all want to open a community center. Initially, some people wanted to call it the “Slavic Center”, which pissed off a variety of nationalities. It was the Ukrainians versus the Russians, versus the Romanians, et cetera. There were too many people still invested in the hatreds of the homeland.

I told Djimet, “Sometimes you just have to wait until that first generation is dead.”

He laughed again. “Maybe so. Maybe so.”

Senay: He sat with me at the very last plenary session. He is from the D.C. area. I do not know his ethnic background, and I don’t really care. I’m not sure what he does. It doesn’t matter. I do know that he cares about immigrants, and I do know that he doesn’t buy into all the political bullshit. He was a little miffed by the fact that a number of speakers talked like everybody in the room was a Democrat. He’s not. Nor am I. He has a job to do, and he will work with anybody who wants to help immigrants. The man seemed very pragmatic, and very real. I liked him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 9th, 2018

The National Immigrant Integration Conference (NIIC) loved plenary sessions. During the course of the conference, there were three plenary sessions a day in the main ballroom of the Marriott. The tables in the ballroom were full of people from all over the country. These meetings leaned heavily on motivational speakers and left wing rhetoric. Lots of talk about “solidarity” and “justice” and “being progressive”. Lots of people sitting at their tables and checking their smart phones while the speakers rambled on and on. In fairness, many of the people who addressed the assembled guests actually had worthwhile things to say. It’s just that there were a few too many long-winded rabble-rousers who also had access to microphones.

One of the plenary sessions was titled: “The Women’s Wave: Women’s Leadership, Immigrants, Refugees, and our Shared Vision”. That seemed to be a reasonable topic for a full session, seeing as most of the work regarding immigrant rights is being done by women. The panel was made up of women: politicians, lawyers, or leaders of non-profits. Then there was also Dr, Leana Wen, who is the President of the Planned Parenthood Foundation. So, why was she there? What does Planned Parenthood have to do with immigrant rights?

I’m not entirely sure how to answer those two questions. Dr. Wen is an immigrant from Shanghai, China. Her life is a classic immigrant success story. She was clearly a hero to many of the people in the audience. To me she looked out of place. The connection between reproductive rights and immigrant rights seems a bit tenuous, except for the fact that it’s all about “rights”.

It made me think about the fact the Planned Parenthood has been very active and visible with marches and demonstrations organized by Voces de la Frontera here in Milwaukee. There is obviously some kind of synergy, but I don’t know exactly what it is.

I also thought about the fact that I knew almost nothing about Planned Parenthood. Ever since I was a teenager, I had heard homilies in church railing against the organization because it provides abortions. Years ago, I had gone to at least one demonstration against Planned Parenthood. In all that time, I never once spoke to anybody who actually worked at Planned Parenthood. I decided that now was the time to do that.

In the hall outside of the main ballroom were rows of tables used by various organizations that help immigrants. Planned Parenthood had its own table with pamphlets and t-shirts and bumper stickers. Oddly enough, two tables away were people from the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. I didn’t notice any discomfort or awkwardness on the part of the members of either group.

After one of the break out sessions, I walked past the tables and I noticed a young Latina at the Planned Parenthood booth. I walked up to her and she greeted me.

I started out cautiously,

“Hi, I have some questions about what you folks do. Ummm, I’m not quite sure how to how to go about this…”

The Latina nodded encouragingly.

I continued, “Okay, I’m Catholic, and I actually care about it. Can you explain to me what you do for people, especially immigrants?”

The young lady said, “We provide medical services for women who cannot get them elsewhere. Maybe it’s because of money or status or because they are afraid to talk to other doctors about reproductive issues. For instance, in my culture, it is very difficult for a woman to discuss sexual matters.”

I said, “You know that the Church demonizes this organization every day, all day?”

She nodded, as if to say, “Yeah, and…?”

Then she said, “I’m Catholic. I am a person of faith. I believe that we are helping those who really need help. We do cancer screenings. We do a lot of preventive medicine and we give out a great deal of information. If the patients want, we talk to them about contraception. I let patients know that they have the option of an abortion.”

I winced a little at that.

I asked her, “So, do you fill a niche that is not filled by any other organization?”

She nodded. “We help the people who have nowhere else to go. We don’t worry about insurance. We don’t ask if they are documented. We don’t judge.”

I had to admire the woman’s sincerity. She is doing what she believes to be right. The abortion thing bothers me, but that’s part of their deal.

What I really wonder is this: Does the Catholic Church offer the services that Planned Parenthood does (excluding contraception and abortion)? Does the Church do anything to meet the medical needs of the poor and outcast? Could the Church fill the gap that is currently filled by Planned Parenthood? Could the Church provide reproductive healthcare in a way that is not judgmental?

The Catholic church spends untold amounts of time and energy fighting against abortion, and I think that it should. However, it also needs to offer an alternative to the immigrants and others who depend so much on the services of Planned Parenthood. If the Church is going to damn Planned Parenthood, then it needs to provide a choice.

It does no good simply to be against something.

 

 

December 9th,2018

Sokthea ate breakfast with me. I had arrived at the immigration conference early, but then I arrive at everything early. Sokthea got there early too. We picked up the programs for the session, and then we found ourselves a table in the meeting room. We were alone there for a while. We ate and talked.

Sokthea Phay is a young man; tall, thin, and passionate. He glows with enthusiasm. He works for as the community operations director at the YMCA in Long Beach, California. He’s a snappy dresser. During the conference, he almost always wore a suit and tie. His appearance was in stark contrast to my own. If I can’t go somewhere in jeans and a sweatshirt, I don’t go.

Sokthea’s family is originally from Cambodia. He came to America with his one-year-old son, and his very pregnant wife in 2013. Jokthea came to this country with no assets. He did have a sponsor, but that was all. Since his arrival, Jokthea has learned English, and found a good position that allows him to help new immigrants at the YMCA (he originally worked with the “Y” when he lived in Cambodia). He has a thick accent, but otherwise his English is as good as mine, if not better.

Sokthea likes to talk, but he also takes time to listen. He carefully heard my story, and he seemed genuinely interested in me as a person. It is rare for someone, especially a stranger, to do that. But he did. In the time it took us to eat breakfast, we had become friends. I found that to be remarkable.

Later in the day, there was a panel discussion about how to help people who face detention and deportation. In particular, the conversation revolved around finding lawyers for these immigrants, and finding the money to pay for lawyers. Once the panelists were done speaking, there a brief period of time for asking questions.

Jokthea eagerly stood up to ask a question. He was a bit closer to the panel than I was, so I was looking at his back while he talked to the panelists. I couldn’t see his facial expression as he spoke.

Jokthea came to his question in a roundabout sort of way. He said,

“We have been talking about helping the detainees. That is good, but there are other people also involved. The families. When a person is detained or deported, the children have to no parent. Then the grandparent must be the parent and raise the children. Sometimes, the grandparents come from Cambodia after the genocide. They have PTSD, or maybe dementia. They cannot work. Sometimes, they get evicted, because they cannot pay rent. Then who cares for the children?”

His voice cracked, and I could see an involuntary shudder in Jokthea’s back and shoulders.

“At the “Y” we try to buy Christmas gifts for these children with no parents. They have nobody.”

Jokthea abruptly stopped speaking. His breathing became labored. I could see him remove his glasses and wipe his eyes.

He breathed deeply and spoke again, “What do we do for the families?”

Jokthea collapsed into the chair next to me, still facing away. I squeezed his shoulder gently. He turned and offered me his hand. Then he looked at the panelists again in silence.

The program ended a few minutes later. He turned to look at me. There was pain in his face. Something cut him to his very core.

I laid my hand on his chest, on the left side. I told him,

“You have a good heart.”

He nodded with wet, glistening eyes.

I said, “You know…you said more in your silence than you did with your words.”

He nodded again.

We hugged.

 

I generally do no provide links to other media. However, Sokthea has a video that rocks.

 

December 5th, 2018

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

I walked along the bike path today after Karin and I had coffee with a friend. The walk home from Panera is about four miles, so I had plenty of time to think. That could be both good and bad. I tend to over-analyze everything. In fact, I am probably doing that now. In any case, I wandered through my memories as I wandered past the bare trees and withered marsh plants that border the edges of the bike path.

Memories are funny things. They don’t necessarily correspond with any kind of objective reality, if there even is any kind of objective reality. Memories tend to highlight only certain aspects of events that happened in the past, and disregard the other parts of those moments in time. My memories seem particularly fuzzy on the details. I do not remember the facts of events as clearly as I remember my feelings when the events occurred. I would be a terrible historian. I often confuse dates and times and all of the minutiae that are a part of my life. But the feelings…those I recall in an intense, visceral, and non-verbal way. The feelings come to me unbidden and overwhelm me.

A Zen friend wrote to me recently concerning my father’s funeral. She wrote:

“As you know, our dead tend to crop up into our present, no matter how far in the past they lived. ‘Past’ is just a human idea, a concept, and we are taught to let go of our conceptual thinking. So, no past. It’s with us now. They are with us now. Like it or not.”

In some ways, my friend agrees with Faulkner. The past is not past, because it is part of the now. Sometimes in Zen, people say glibly that the past no longer exists, so we should not dwell there. We should be totally in the here and now. It is true that yesterday is gone forever, and I can do nothing to change it. However, yesterday still affects today. The events of the past may be gone, but they echo in the present. I can hear and feel the echoes.

Many times, I have spoken with our son, Hans, about his experiences in the latest Iraqi War. He has often made an odd comment about his time there. He has told me that he has always been good with machine guns (and other weapons), and that it is because he is a German. That remark seems bizarre, but then I remember that his maternal grandfather was in the Luftwaffe, and that this man fought in Russia during WWII. Hans harks back to those days, maybe unconsciously. All of that happened decades ago, but it comes roaring into the now. As my friend noted, “Our dead tend to crop up in the present”. They do so in strange ways. Sometimes these intrusions are subtle. Sometimes not.

It is tempting to say things like, “Every day is a new day!”, or “This is the first day of the rest of your life!” The implication is that a person can start afresh, that each day is a clean slate. Not. It is true that I can do things different today than I did yesterday. However, I carry the burden of my history even in a new day. The past comes to me in my memories and in my DNA.

I am part of a continuum. I am just a single note in an endless song. The song is not complete without me, but I am only a tiny part of it.

 

 

December 4th, 2018

Tonight the sangha will celebrate the Buddha’s Enlightenment Day at the Zen Center. I think that, in all the years that I have been meditating at the center, I have attended this celebration only once. My failure to participate has not been for lack of interest. It is more a matter of timing. For years I worked third shift, so attending an evening gathering meant that I would get no sleep prior to going to my job. After I retired three years ago, I found that I would spend most of my Tuesday nights visiting with the patients in the psychiatric ward at the local VA hospital.  These visits have always conflicted with the Buddha’s Enlightenment Day festivities. In fact, there a scheduling conflict tonight.

If I recall correctly, the ceremony involves chanting, sitting meditation, and perhaps the reading of a poem. There is not much spontaneity. The altar will be festooned with flowers and fruit. After the ritual is completed, the participants will socialize and snack on sweets. It’s not a very exciting celebration, but it has its own unique beauty.

The visits to the psych ward are a little more chaotic. I go with a couple other people to the hospital. We bring snacks to the veterans in the ward. Some folks play cards. I usually try to initiate conversations with a few of the patients. I pay attention to them. I listen to their stories. Some of the vets don’t want to talk. Some are eager to tell somebody, anybody, about their lives. Many of the patients are sick and scared and lonely. They’re hurting, some of them very deeply.

So, this brings me back to enlightenment. What is it and how does one get it? I have never heard a clear definition of enlightenment. Maybe if a person can describe it, they don’t really have it. It seems to involve being able to see the world as it really is. Some people get enlightenment by sitting on a cushion and mentally reciting a mantra. Some get it through chanting sutras. Some people solve a kung-on (koan), an riddle that defies logical thought. Some people get it when a Zen Master smacks them upside the head.

I don’t have enlightenment, and I doubt that I will get it. I do find glimmers of the truth when I hang out with the folks at the psych ward. Some of them are Zen masters, and completely unaware of the fact. Those are the best kind. Some of the vets are living totally in the moment. Their past is completely trashed and they have no future worthy of mention. They have gained their wisdom the hard way, by having their attachments torn away by a brutal life in an irrational world. They are often almost childlike in their honesty and lack of pretense. Every patient’s life is a kung-on, and some of them have accepted their life just as it is.

Some Zen masters wear flowing grey robes. Some of them wear maroon bathrobes over pajamas. Their job is to teach the dharma. Some of them use riddles. Some of them are riddles. Some of them sit and meditate with me. Some of them look me in the eye and tell me how they killed a man.

Who can best teach me about suffering and compassion? A man who trained his mind for years to become aware of his surroundings, or a man who is haunted by the violence he endured five decades ago? Do I learn best from a person who is serene, or from a person whose soul is scorched?

Tonight I will study the dharma and celebrate the Buddha’s Enlightenment Day at the psych ward.

 

 

December 2nd, 2018

We sent all three of our children to Waldorf schools.

None of them have forgiven us for that.

I suppose that I should pause for a moment to explain what a Waldorf school is. This is somewhat complicated. A Waldorf school can be different things to different people. It depends on what a person is looking for. A Waldorf school attracts a peculiar population. If a person sends their kids to a Waldorf school, then they are already living pretty close to the edge. Waldorf is not mainstream. Not at all.

The first Waldorf school was established in Stuttgart, Germany, just after World War I, by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner was a visionary, in the literal sense of the word. He claimed to be able to see various aspects of the spiritual world. He was a polymath, a man who was interested in everything and explored everything. He had never considered getting involved with education until the owner of a German cigarette factory asked Steiner to start a school for the children of his employees. At that point, Steiner’s spiritual vision kicked into high gear.

Steiner believed that the growth of each child was like the development of the entire human race in microcosm. He saw that every child went through every stage of the history of humanity. Steiner based his educational model on this premise. Everything in Waldorf flows from that concept.

Waldorf is spiritual, without being particularly religious. In essence, it is expected that people might talk about God at a Waldorf school, but it is not required that a person belong to a particular sect. When our kids were at Tamarack Waldorf School, many years ago, there were people who were Jewish or Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim or Wiccan. There was a very eclectic mix of religions. The common ground for everyone was the notion that there is more to life than just the material world.

The population of the school was also economically diverse. Some people were poor, some were wealthy. The population was racially mixed. There was an emphasis on being open and inclusive.

To a certain degree.

Waldorf schools are an offshoot of anthroposophy, which was Steiner’s all-encompassing philosophy. There are a certain number of people involved with Waldorf who believe that, if Steiner said it, then it must be true. In short, there are Waldorf fundamentalists. I think that it is also true that Waldorf schools have a idiosyncratic culture, one that embraces the noble goals of creating peace and preserving the environment, but also seems enamored with silks and stardust. Waldorf schools tend toward pastel colors, and things that are warm and fuzzy.

I never felt completely at ease in the Waldorf environment. This is mostly because I am not warm and fuzzy. Many people will testify to that fact. I always felt like a Philistine, not nearly enlightened enough to be part of the group. Karin, on the other hand, was able to get a part time job at the school as a teacher’s assistant. Karin helped teach handwork to the children (knitting, sewing, crocheting). So, Karin wound up teaching exactly the things she does every day. Perfect.

So, why do our kids hate us for sending them to this school?

I think that it is mostly because they all had a truly brutal transition from Waldorf to public schools. Everyone of them initially got their academic asses kicked when they got into high school. The problem was that the Waldorf teachers were generalists. They were supposed to be able to teach almost everything, and they did so with a reasonable level of competence. Public school teachers specialize in a certain subject, which makes them experts in a narrow field. So, our kids were not well prepared in every subject. They were well prepared for art and music and independent thinking. However, public schools don’t really give a damn about any of those things. Public schools are factories that spit out drones for industry to use and abuse. Our kids did not fit in, at least not at first.

Yesterday, Karin and I went back to the Waldorf school in Milwaukee for their winter fair. We hadn’t been there for several years. Karin lost her handwork gig a while back, so we left that community for a while. I suggested that we check out the fair this year. I guess that the thought was prompted by the fact that we will soon have a grandson. Sometimes, thinking about the future takes a person back to the past. Ostensibly, we were going to the fair to find something for the baby. I think we went for other reasons.

The Christmas/Holiday/Winter Fair at the Waldorf school is always pretty much the same. There are vendors selling anything that is organic or free trade or somehow involved with social justice. Every purchase is a political statement. Actually, some of the stuff was pretty cool. There were some really neat wooden toys. Those we will have to buy a couple years from now when Weston is older.

There was a booth for henna painting. There was a room set up for serving treats (cakes and cookies and tea and coffee and whatever). The classrooms were open so that prospective students and their parents could see what wonderful things occur in these classes. The set up hasn’t changed during the last few years.

We reconnected with a few people from years ago. In some cases the interactions were a bit stiff and awkward. However, several of Karin’s former students recognized their former handwork instructor, and initiated contact with her. These were teenagers who most likely spend their free time being cynical and surly. However, they usually smiled shyly at Karin and said something like,

“Mrs. Pauc, you probably don’t remember me at all, but…”

Then Karin would realize who they had been all those years ago. Karin beamed back at them. Sometimes they embraced. There was a true feeling of affection between Karin and those kids who had struggled to knit way back when. They have a real bond. It was beautiful to see.

Even if that is all that Waldorf has to offer, it’s worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 29th, 2018

I was sitting upstairs in the humble residence of the Syrian family. Their home always reminds of the house where I grew up. The building has to be at least one hundred years old. This house, like the home of my youth, needs a lot of TLC. The house has the same energy that my childhood home did: lots of kids in constant motion, random yelling, no privacy, and a sort of barely contained chaos.

I had just finished working with Muhamed on his reading assignment. That kid is sharp. He knew the answers. He never guessed. His understanding of English is impressive. He has no accent that I can detect. It is probably because he is so young. He is easily absorbing the language that surrounds him at school. He will do well.

Nizar came up the stairs with his math assignment. He had to multiply numbers with decimals. He smiled as he told me,

“This is easy. It won’t take long.”

He had already done a couple of the problems. I could tell at a glance that the answers weren’t quite right. This homework was going to take longer than Nizar thought.

We went back over his completed problems. In a way, doing multiplication on a piece of paper with a stubby pencil is rather archaic. It took me a minute or two to remember how to do it. Even then, I asked Nizar to find us a calculator, just in case my brain had atrophied.

I showed Nizar how to do one of the problems.

“Okay, you first multiply the number on top by the last digit of the bottom number. You have to remember where to put the decimal point. Both the numbers in this problem have decimal points before the last digit, so when we times them, the decimal point will be in front of the last two digits. You got it?”

He nodded.

I wasn’t fooled by that.

I finished the problem, and then I told him to do the next one. I said,

“Keep the numbers you get in straight columns, so you can up the results. The decimal points need to be lined up.”

“Okay.”

He paused for a moment, obviously unsure of something.

“What’s wrong?.”

He asked me, “What is seven times eight?”

“Well, let’s figure that out.” I held up the fingers of my hands and counted,

“7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49…”

Nizar interjected, “54?”

“No, not quite. Try 56.”

He nodded, “Yeah, okay.”

As he scribbled on the worksheet, I heard a voice in my head. It was a voice from fifty years ago. It was an angry, impatient voice…

“Goddammit! How many times do I have to tell you the number?! Don’t you pay attention at school? Do you just use your head for a hat rack?!”

“Is this right?’ asked Nizar.

“What?”

I shook my head to clear my thoughts, and looked at his answer. “Yeah, that is good. Check it again with the calculator.”

The voice from my past was suddenly more insistent.

“Jesus Christ! What is hard about this? Are you dumb or just lazy?! Anybody could figure out the answer!”

Nizar’s mother came up the stairs. Her arrival brought me back to the present. She had a plate of food for me: stuffed grape leaves.

She said in her halting English, “I make this today. You eat, Frank. That is yogurt there too.”

I tried some of the grape leaves. They were very good. Nizar struggled through another math problem.

“Frank, what is six times eight?”

“You’re smart, Nizar. Think about it.” Then I counted off,

“6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42…”

“48?”

“Yes! Excellent!”

The voice screamed in my mind, “What is wrong with you?! You can’t cut the mustard?! I don’t need no dummies in this family!”

My heart raced. I thought to myself, “Shut up. Just fucking shut up.”

Nizar said, “We are done now.”

“Cool. Nizar, you need to work on your multiplication tables. I mean really. You can’t get the right answers if you can’t times the numbers.”

He looked at me seriously and nodded.

“Nizar, what are you good at? In school, I mean.”

He got excited. “Reading and writing. I am very good with that. I write a lot in class.”

I smiled. “Good. I write a lot too. I wrote a book once. It was about my son. He was a soldier.”

Nizar looked at me a bit oddly.

I shrugged and said,

“Nizar, you’re a smart guy. You’ll be okay.”

The voice from my past was silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 29th, 2018

“Here’s your gold watch and the shackles for your chains
And your piece of paper, to say you left here sane
And if you’ve a son who wants a good career
Just get him to sign on the dotted line and work for 50 years”

“Gold Watch Blues” by Donovan

My dad worked for decades as an operating engineer for the City of West Allis (Wisconsin). He retired at the age of fifty-five, or maybe fifty-seven. I’m not sure. I can’t remember any more. He received a full pension for the City. He got checks every month until he died. That’s thirty years worth of pension checks. He was a lucky man.

Not everybody in my father’s generation retired with a pension, but many did. Far fewer people in my generation have pensions, and quite possibly nobody from the Millennials will get one. A person from my father’s time could reasonably expect to retire with some level of financial security. With my generation, retirement is kind of iffy. As for my kids, well, they’re screwed. My children are convinced that they will be working until they die, and they are probably right.

That doesn’t sound quite like the American dream? What happened?

I remember when I got out of the Army, back in 1986, I got hired by a company, and they were so excited to tell me all about the 401k program. They thought it was some sort of miracle. They kept telling me about how taxes would deferred on my account, and how the company would chip in some money. They really pushed the idea that it was “portable”; that it was all my money, and that I could take it with me, if (God forbid) I should leave. Okay. That’s nice.

Shortly thereafter, I quit that job, and then I got hired by a trucking company in the Milwaukee area. That was in 1988. The trucking firm had a pension and they had the 401k. Well, they did for a while. After maybe ten years or so, the company quit offering a pension. Long time employees (like me at that point) were vested, and could get a smidgen of the pension at a much later date. The management of the company blamed government regulations for their decision (because that’s what corporations do), and they promised to pump a bunch of money into everybody’s retirement fund.

They did.

Until the Great Recession of 2008.

Once the recession hit, all bets were off. The company stopped contributing to the 401k, and basically told every employee,

“You’re on your own, bitch!”

Of course, we all knew that already.

At the end of 2015, by some quirk of fate, I was still working at this same trucking company, and I suddenly qualified for the elusive pension. I took it and ran. The pension really wasn’t (isn’t) that much. It just basically covers the cost of the health insurance for me and my wife. Somehow, at that point in time, we were debt-free and we had money saved. I retired.

I would like to say that I was able to retire because of the astute handling of our finances. That would be a lie. For years I never even looked at what was in the 401k. To me, all of that was like Monopoly money, that is, until I actually pulled the plug. I was able to retire because of a combination of frugality, dumb luck, and good karma.

A lot of people don’t have that combination. The dream of a happy retirement can be derailed by a medical crisis, or by the sudden loss of a job (think about all those poor bastards being laid off now by GM). A lot of things are out of an individual’s control. A person cannot plan for everything. Life happens.

Maybe in our time the retirement funds are a better solution than pensions were. However, for the corporations there are unanticipated downsides to 401k’s. The companies told the workers that these plans were portable, and that fact made the employees more likely to leave. And they did. A pension tends to keep an employee with a particular organization. A 401k makes for a transient workforce.

The 401k represents much of what is wrong with corporate America. A pension plan has obvious drawbacks, but it always demonstrated a long term commitment from the company to the employee. It likewise required a strong commitment from the worker. The 401k says, “We don’t care about you, and you don’t need to care about us.” That is the message, loud and clear.

A few weeks before I retired, I was called into HR for a meeting. The company had a chronic morale problem, and the folks at Human Resources wanted to talk to people to find out what could be done. I don’t understand why they wanted to speak with me, especially since I was ready to abandon ship, but they interrogated me anyway.

I remember the woman from HR asking me, in her soothing, singsong voice,

“So, do you feel appreciated here?”

I replied, “No.”

Awkward silence.

She cleared her throat, smiled, and said sweetly,

“Why not?”

I told her, “I have the same value here as a forklift. I am very replaceable.”

Another awkward silence.

She said, “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t give a fuck about me.” That part I did not actually say, but she could read my body language.

My kids job hop. They move from place to place. They sign up with whoever can offer them 50 cents more per hour than their current boss. I have been told that all of their generation does that. The corporations show them no loyalty, and they return the favor. It makes me laugh when management types complain that they can’t keep good people. Really? No kidding? If you treat a person like a commodity, they will respond accordingly. If you treat a person like a person, they might just hang around.

“Here’s your gold watch and the shackles for your chains
And your piece of paper, to say you left here sane
And if you’ve a son who wants a good career
Just get him to sign on the dotted line and work for 50 years

This story that you’ve heard, you may think rather queer
But it is the truth you’ll be surprised to hear
I did not want some job up on the board
I just wanted to take a broom and sweep the bloody floor.”

“Gold Watch Blues”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 26th, 2018

Milwaukee has a “Christkindlmarket”. The correct German spelling of the word would “Christkindlmarkt” (lose the “e” in “market”), but the local version of the word is close enough. The literal translation of the word from the German into English would be “Christ Child Market”, which is to say that it is kind of an outdoor Christmas fair. Christkindlmarkt is a word used primarily in southern Germany.  In the northern part of the country, they also have these outdoor markets, but they are referred to as a  “Weihnachtsmarkt”, a Christmas Market. The Germans love this sort of thing. Nuremberg and Rothenburg in Bavaria both have wonderful open markets in their town squares. I have been to them. They are especially magical at night, with their lights and music and different kinds of food. The Christkindlmarket in downtown Milwaukee is a weak imitation of the German originals, but it’s all that we have.

Karin wanted to go to the Christkindlmarkt. The fact is that she misses Christmas in Germany, more than she used to miss it. I think she heard about the Christkindlmarkt from a friend in one of her knitting groups. Karin talked to me about going to see it. She became enthusiastic and told me,

“We could eat there. We could have a Bratwurst and a Glühwein!”

She smiled as she spoke of it. For those who do not know, a bratwurst is a sausage found almost everywhere in Germany. Glühwein is hot, spiced wine, usually served in a mug. The two things go well together, especially when it’s cold outside.

The market is located in downtown Milwaukee, near Highland and 4th Street. The booths are set up in a small plaza near the new arena for the local basketball team. The Milwaukee Bucks arena towers over the small collection of kiosks. It feels a little odd. A Christkindlmarkt ought to be surrounded by old, medieval buildings. However, we live in America, and we don’t have any of those.

Karin first wanted to go into the large, framed, heated tent that housed the Käthe Wohlfahrt store. Käthe Wohlfahrt is a famous Christmas store in the old walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. Karin grew up near Rothenburg. In fact, our very first date was in Rothenburg. The store in Rothenburg has a three-story-high Christmas pyramid. A Christmas pyramid is a wooden tower that rotates. I could further explain what a Christmas pyramid is, but you can look it up online. The point is that Käthe Wohlfahrt holds a special place in Karin’s heart, so that’s where we went.

The tent was filled with ornaments, nutcrackers, and Räuchermännchen. Yeah, okay, so what is a Räuchermännchen? A Räuchermännchen is a small, wooden figurine that looks like he or she is smoking when you burn a bit of incense inside of it. In any case, the store was full of things that Karin wanted to see. There were also Advent calendars, chocolates, and pictures from Germany.

Basically, there was nothing in that store that anybody needed. Well, to clarify, there was nothing there that anybody needed in a purely physical way. The store was full of things that were soulful, and oddly necessary. Does anyone really need a hand carved, wooden tree ornament? A person may need that if it somehow provides a connection with a time and place that are now lost. Karin kept talking about Christmases from long ago as she handled the various trinkets.  She bought a small ornament to take with her on a future trip to Texas. The ornament was tiny, and fragile, and oh so precious. It means something. It is a talisman.

After we left Käthe Wohlfahrt, we wandered past the other kiosks. One person was selling ornaments and crucifixes made from olive wood from Bethlehem. I wonder if anybody made the connection to the fact that Bethlehem is in Palestine, a place that has no peace. These ornaments come from people who are suffering, people who are landless.

Other kiosks sold caps and mittens. Some booths sold roasted nuts or pretzels or natural soaps. One kiosk had gifts from Anatolia (Turkey). One booth had shawls and slippers made from felt that came from Kyrgyzstan. The seller had a vaguely Asiatic look and a Slavic accent, and she haggled like someone from the East. One woman sold Ukrainian decorations and ceramic dolls.

We walked into the sweet store, full of candy and cookies and joy. Karin kept looking at things and saying, “We always had this when we were little! Opa bought it for us!” Karin bought some chocolates (Aachener Dominos and Laetzchen) and some Magenbrot. These confections are difficult to describe. It is best if they are just tasted. Simpler that way. Anyway, buying the treats made Karin happy, and that was the purpose of this excursion.

I wonder if the imminent arrival of our first grandson has anything to do with Karin’s desire to go to the Christkindlmarkt. The baby is due on Christmas Eve. Another Christ Child. Another incarnation of the divine. Christ continually being born into this world.

Karin and I finally found the kiosk that sold food. We decided to get a some Leberkäse (hot German bologna) and the Glühwein. We sat in a tent with heaters, and ate our lunch. Karin thought that the Glühwein was a bit strong. Maybe it was.

Maybe it just tasted like this coming Christmas.