Today I received a postcard that Buzz sent me from Cuba. The picture shows a billboard with a cartoon. In the cartoon, a demonized Uncle Sam is growling across water towards a fearless soldier who is calling back "Senores imperialistas, no les tenemos absolutamente ningun miedo!" (Mr. Imperialist, we are absolutely unafraid!) In the postcard Buzz writes, "Fidel is interested in your philosophy about the web and technology in general." I can always count on Buzz for a smile and I probably won't even be dragged away and labeled an "enemy combatant" for it. (Buzz sent me a picture of a similar billboard which I include below).
In some parts of the world, they take things like that more seriously. I remember my dad had a German girlfriend for a while. Once, when she was in Germany, she sent him back a postcard with a picture of Lenin on it, which he thought was a good joke. My dad wanted to return the favor and went looking for postcards with important figures from the Third Reich, but wasn't able to find any. I remember he remarked on how difficult it was, like it was a real puzzle. I believe he eventually constructed one -- I can't remember exactly who's picture it was -- and sent it to her with the salutation, "Meine kleine Obersturmführer" or something like that. She wasn't amused and insisted that he never do anything like that ever again.
Phil says
I should make comparable postcard to send to Buzz -- maybe Che Guevara or Ayn Rand (depending on exactly how the analogy should
be played out). I suggested John Ashcroft as a more comparable figure, but I'll leave the execution as an exercise for the reader.
- And, although I don't think I will be labeled an "enemy combatant", there is a real chill in our country regarding dissent right now. Around here, you frequently see people wearing buttons that say, "Dissent is Patriotic" and the like. But many parts of the country, and seemingly most of the officials of the Bush Administration, do not feel that "dissent is patriotic". Tim Robbins gave a speech to the National Press Corps (Reprinted by Salon) which describes how bad the situation is
- A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. "If you oppose this administration there can and will be ramifications." Every day the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and in fear.
My only consolation is that the FCC and Clear Channel have made radio so bad that hardly anyone bothers listening to the radio anymore.
I watched Spirited Away again this evening. I fell in love with Studio Ghibli when I first saw My Neighbor Totoro and I find particular resonance with the message of Spirited Away. I found this proposal by Miyazaki about his aims in creating the movie.
In an era of no borders, people who do not have a place to stand will be treated unseriously. A place is the past and history. A person with no history, a people who have forgotten their past, will vanish like snow, or be turned into chickens to keep laying eggs until they are eaten.
This is very much what James Howard Kunstler said when I saw him speak at Mt Holyoke a year ago. He put up a picture of a new home in a development. As I recall it was a split-level built, as so many are, as cheaply as possible. It stood by itself, for the moment, on a barren plain of dirt, but closely surrounded by a sea of barren scrub and weeds. In the background, closing in, as it were, was the rest of the subdivision. It was a place with no history, no past, and no future. He echoes these thoughts in Sleepwalking into the Future
Suburbia sends out a message of overwhelming hopelessness: “no future here.” Teenagers, who are struggling to develop a meaningful view of life, are especially susceptible to this grim message and are apt to personalize it. If my surroundings have no future, than there is no place for me and I have no future. It is inevitable that such conditions would provoke tremendous anxiety and depression. Add to this the fact that teenagers are just discovering their adult power to act decisively and you have a recipe for the carrying out of tragic deeds.
When we started looking for a house, we looked at a place just like that called Dana Woods, but we couldn't quite afford it. Over the course of a year, we looked at a lot of houses. During that time, I reread the Geography of Nowhere and we talked a lot about what we really wanted. When we finally bought a house, we bought one in a neighborhood with a neighborhood school. My kids walk to school and I can walk to my office (though I often take the bus). Whenever I drive by Dana Woods, I always breathe a huge sigh of relief.