Mystic Chords of Memory

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." ~ US President Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861. Full text here.

Memory, like dreaming, is often highly emotionally charged. There's the Proustian memory trigger -- a deep memory surfaces due to a scent, a sound, a person who resembles someone from the past (or future, if it's a premonition); or the memory reminder, like a photograph, journal entry, memory-laden discussion, written communication or voice mail. Often just a person's name or thinking about a certain time or place will conjure up a memory, or a slew of them. 

Memories often conflict or prove paradoxical. I recently finished Ian Gibson's Federico García Lorca: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989) and what was made very clear in it is that different people remembered Lorca differently, even from the same event, based partly on how well they knew him, how they felt about him, how much time had elapsed, and what they wanted to remember about him. 

So I thought I'd post a sampling of remembered people, times and places. If the context of a situation is not viscerally recalled, the details seem vaguer. Let's give it a try, shall we?

When I was a teenager, I met Ariana Bracalente at an amusement park in Virginia -- not randomly but through Marc Pinotti, a mutual friend. She was a little older than I was, an exciting development at the time. She was smart, astute and interesting; her mother was a nurse and they were Catholic. We were close for some time, and wrote lots of letters. The last time I saw her was at a football game, also in Virginia, and she was taking pictures with, if I remember correctly, a Nikon with zoom lens. Ah, youth!

In my early twenties, I met a handful of much older German fellows at Normandy, in France. They were celebrating their "alive day." On June 6-7, 1944, then draftees in the Wehrmacht, they rather wisely surrendered to Canadian assault forces as fast as they could and, obviously, survived the war. With some college friends from Chapel Hill, we shared bottles of wine and were all singing by the end of the night. Though we only saw them over a period of two days, they made a lasting impression. Three names stick with me: Willi Wiederstein from near Düsseldorf, Karl and Helmut. Luckily, I'm still excellent friends with one of the American college students who also experienced this exchange firsthand.

When I was living in Philadelphia, while a graduate student at Temple University, I came to know a number of intelligent and fun people from Vietnam, China, India, Germany, Russia, Canada, England, France, Spain, Italy and Thailand, among other places. One of the many, Nga Mai, an edgy (and rather striking in appearance) entrepreneur and restaurateur, hired me occasionally to cover her Diva Café, right across the way from my apartment at 1225 Spruce Street; sometimes we'd play chess and talk about Hannah Arendt or Camille Paglia, who was teaching nearby at the University of the Arts. Nga and her two sisters had come to the USA with their Catholic mother, starting in Omaha, Nebraska; their father remained in Vietnam after the Americans departed. We stayed in touch for a while after I left the city, after she closed Diva and opened up a couple of new places over by Rittenhouse Square. At Diva, she would explain to people how to remember conceptualizing and spelling her first name: "like National Golf Association." (Which in turn reminds me of Stuart Basefsky, a librarian mentor from Duke University, now at Cornell University's School of Industry and Labor Relations, who would say his last name to newcomers and explain, "like Base and Sky with an F in the middle." Like I sometimes say, when people ask, "Erik with a k.")

Also in Philadelphia, I unexpectedly came to know Lu Ping from the People's Republic of China in a history class. She was an English teacher when back in China. Her stories about her father, who was very old by then, and his experiences during the Long March were remarkable. Only later did I realize that her name could be better understood in reverse, as Ping Lu.

When I moved to Detroit, there were additional new waves of people to meet. Like mustard seeds, some took hold and some didn't. I remember early on, upon the first occasion of meeting David J. Thompson, an English instructor then and a wandering poet and photographer now. This is primarily because of the specific context: I was seated at his flimsy card table, slowly sinking into wet clay, enclosed within a Japanese-style courtyard designed in the 1950s by Minoru Yamasaki. Thompson had on the table a 1995 book, which I asked about: Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain, a fascinating memoir about snake-handlers and old time religion in the American South. (Side memory: for some reason Thompson hated Abraham Lincoln). The last time I saw him was at Steve's Back Room, a Middle Eastern Restaurant in Saint Clair Shores. By this time, several years after the first introductions, we both were working on laptops at separate tables, and I was moving to Texas; outside, there was snow on the ground.  

Also in metro Detroit, there was another English instructor (among many) on another occasion -- a regular bar night for artists and educators -- that I recall, from a couple years later. In this case, it was the unusual name that stuck: Carroll Louis Goossen, Jr. I wondered why whoever was in charge of given names in the Goossen clan flipped the name from a literary salute to Lewis Carroll, author of Through the Looking Glass, to such an awful appendage? This to me was as strange as the Lu Ping/Ping Lu flip or Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue." Then again, the "real" name of Lewis Carroll was actually Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. 

The last time I saw Cal was probably at Macomb Community College, where for a while I taught Writing, English, Poetry and the (International) Novel as an adjunct -- (I was working full time as a librarian elsewhere). 

For now, I'll end with a relevant snippet about people's names from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Chapter Six:

'"My name is Alice, but — "
"It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. "What does it mean?"
"Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.
"Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: "my name means the shape I am — and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."' Indeed.

Dear reader, how do you remember people and their names? 

Today's Rune: Strength.

From Moscow to Detroit and Back Again: Gabe Polsky's 'Red Army' (2014)

Red Army, Gabe Poslky's 2104 documentary, hands us a heady cocktail of strong hockey suffused with bittersweet history. Man, it's chock full of pizzaz and a lot of RED. 

(Note: the great German director Werner Herzog is listed as one of the producers.) 

From this action-packed yet thoughtful film, viewers will catch a pretty good glimpse at the arc of international sports (specifically ice hockey) and dueling propaganda machines within the context of the Cold War, ranging from the 1950s to the end of the Soviet Union -- and then spilling into the 21st century. There are dramatic twists and turns, especially toward the end. Believe me, это дикая поездка.  

Red Army features two of the elite Red Army hockey team's biggest coaches, Anatoli Tarasov (1918-1995) and Viktor Tikhonov (1930-2014).  The latter comes off as a ruthless bastard, with Tarasov as the more favorably critiqued. The cagey Tarasov is shown combining disciplines, studying hockey tactics, chess strategy, the Bolshoi Ballet's precision and the energy of boogie woogie. Brilliant.   

The Red Army dudes end up playing in the NHL for a while, and five of the top guys help the Detroit Red Wings seize the Stanley cup in the late 1990s, which is when I move to Detroit and get to see them play. 

What goes around comes around -- but I won't give away the ending here or now. Who knows? Just maybe you might check it out.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.  

Das Schloß / The Castle

Happily finished Austrian director Michael Haneke's Das Schloß / The Castle, a 1997 movie faithfully based on Franz Kafka's unfinished novel (or extended fragment, ending literally in mid-sentence) of the same name that was first published in 1926. It would make a good companion piece to other Kafka adaptations. 

Anyone dealing with the "health care industry" or, indeed, various other types of large scale organisms, organizations or system-clusters would recognize the truth of Kafka's vision. That is, absurdity prevails. Mistakes. Errors. Oversights. Misunderstandings. Deliberate and -- maybe even sometimes -- accidental.

Das Schloß / The Castle is not really a comedy, but there are elements of satire and dark humor. 

Convenient way to catch up on Kafka, see a movie and hear what amounts to a German audio book, as well. 

Never ever fear: subtitles do appear.  

Today's Rune: Defense.

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers: Take Two

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers (1997, 1998) digs well into the world of temp workers, letting the key actors go at their characters with gusto. Parker Posey (Party Girl, Broken English) has the fun role of extroverted prankster rebel. Toni Collette (Little Miss Sunshine, United States of Tara) gets the lead, introverted but coming to wisdom. Lisa Kudrow (The Comeback) and Alanna Ubach (Meet the Fockers) are saddled with sadly self-deluded characters, which they portray perfectly. I've met them all, their archetypes, somewhere along the way. Temping is no bowl of cherries.  

Today's Rune: Defense.

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers: Take One

Jill Sprecher's Clockwatchers (1997) runs along a continuum of memorable movie and TV depictions of the post-World War II office milieu. It covers a social and technological setting more recent than AMC's Mad Men, before Office Space, and lately carried forth into the nightmarish underworld (akin to Philip K. Dick) depicted in the HBO series Enlightened.

It's conciousness-raising to sample Clockwatchers along with the rest of these, blending them together over a short period. Mind-blowing, really.  

What's very noticeable from the perspective of 2013 is:

1) The division of labor by gender in Clockwatchers (mid-to-late 1990s) is still largely intact from the Mad Men period (1960s).

2) In Clockwatchers, technology is just beginning to transition away from typewriter and landline-driven communications. As things stand among the temp workers of the mid-1990s, they still resemble the Mad Men period. This transition can clearly be seen increasing in speed by the time Office Space comes out in the late 1990s -- a mere two years after Clockwatchers.

3) In Clockwatchers, male bosses hand scrawled drafts to female secretaries who are expected to type them into impeccably polished letters -- if lucky, on IBM Selectric typewriters. A lot of letters and forms come in duplicate and triplicate, requiring extra care in processing. 

4) Most clocks are analog, not digital. 

5) There is a lot of time spent on manual filing systems that take up a lot of physical storage space.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  

Today's Rune: Signals.
     

I Love Banned Books!

In the USA, George Carlin was the man when it came to pointing out the absurdities of word censorship, with nods to Nat Hentoff and many others.

As a librarian and writer, I love banned words. I love banned books displays, too. And of course, I love banned books.

Taking on censorship is a piece of cake -- unless that censorship has government and secret police backing. Unless that censorship is enforced by Italian fascists, North Korean "communists," Iranian Basij, Puritan freaks, Ku Klux Klansmen, Nazi brutes, Syrian interior ministry stooges or totalitarian/authoritarian goon squads in general. Even then, crackdowns add weight to the importance of words, texts, art of all kinds, even more so -- precisely because made rare and precious, subversive and free.

Back in 1997 while doing research, I visited the Special Collections at UVA's Alderman Library in Charlottesville, Virginia, which had amazing displays, things like William Faulkner's typewriter, coat, chair and other accessories; if memory serves, it had samples of Thomas Jefferson's red hair, too, and artifacts from US and Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. UVA's Special Collections also had on display banned materials like S.C.U.M. Manifesto and William S. Burroughs' (aka William Lee's) Junkie. Hell, even Homer's The Odyssey was banned by morons somewhere on Earth.

Love it: the Power of the Word.

Today's Rune: Movement. [Adapted from an earlier post dated July 18, 2009].

Sulaima Hind Interview, Part 1

Today, the 39th anniversary of the founding of Christiania, is a fitting time for posting the first part of an interview with Sulaima Hind. To backtrack a little, here is part of an earlier post to frame today's:

An alternative community, very interesting to check out: Copenhagen, Denmark's Freetown Christiania. Situated on a former military site, nearly 1,000 people live there. . . If you're into art and music, it's there. It's everywhere. In fact, all of Copenhagen, all of Denmark is nifty-fifty. Indeed, all the Nordic/Scandanavian countries are culturally sophisticated, ecologically minded and highly educated. [However, as this interview suggests in Part 2 along the lines of Hamlet, there's also something rotten going on in Denmark  -- xenophobia].

You might say that Existentialism started in Copenhagen with Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whose spirit roams the city. Above: Peter Fallesen & Sulaima Hind, Fristaden Christiania / Freetown Christiania (2008).

The Interview, Part 1.

Erik:  Sulaima, can you tell us something about your work?

Sulaima:  The book Fristaden Christiania/Freetown Christiania is made as a journey into this one of a kind place, our beloved squat city Christiania. It contains photos and facts by Peter Fallesen, and five short stories by me. Both of us are living in Christiania. As an author one of my goals is to create images with words, you know, show don´t tell, that’s the kind of literature I like to read and write.  It is also a goal or wish for me, through my writing, to broaden my horizon, and in that process, hopefully that of others as well.

My debut as an author was in 1997 with the novel Voxeværk = Growingpains. It´s translated into German, with the title Straßenkind / Strassenkind = Streetkid, and into Estonian and Russian, but not yet into English.  The novel is a raw tour de force through my youth which was mostly spent on the streets of Copenhagen, as I from the age of 13 was a wery self-destructive and violent punkgirl. Finally, around 1987, I found a safe place to settle down in Christiania, and have done a lot of psychological and spiritual work since then, and written four books, and contributed to other books.

I have also cofounded a project for new generations of streetkids, voiced my opinions in newspapers, and finally I do motivational speeches. Doing that, telling people my story and insights is my passion and my only income. . .

If you want to see photos of me and my books, please see http://www.sulaimahind.dk/  

To read more about Christiania: www.christiania.org

If you want to contact the publisher of Freetown Christiania: www.nytnordiskforlag.dk  

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Scenes from an Elevator

Today's shenanigans will evoke elevator scenes from movies, TV series or books. For today, let's stick to comedy and drama and shy away from crime, horror and James Bond.   Who's that elevator operator there?  Why, that's Shirley McLane in front of Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960)! 

Scene from latest episode of AMC's Mad Men: Joan (Christina Hendricks), Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono) on the down-elevator.  Do they look enamored of each other to you?

Other scenes that pop to mind come from The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978) and the surreal elevator ride to the lowest level of Hell in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997). 

Again, staying with comedy and drama for now, can you recall any elevator scenes off the top of your head?



Today's Rune: Growth.

Gone Digital: Information Mass and Movement

Where are we going, where have we been?  It's strange thumbing through my copy of James L. Baughman's The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America Since 1941 (2nd edition, 1997).  It becomes clear that things have shifted significantly since its publication (and even since the 3rd edition, 2005).  Baughman looks particularly at how television changed mass media from the end of the Second World War through the second half of the twentieth century.  Radio and newspaper were displaced to more secondary roles, corporate mergers and aquisitions accrued power to centralized organizations, and so on. 

But in the last ten years, things have shifted even more wildly from analog to digital: everything from photography to publishing to music and correspondence. What we have now seems increasingly strange to me.  I remember when reading newspapers, magazines and letters were features of every day life, when phone calls were a big deal (especially "long distance"), when folks planned meals around daily news broadcasts at set times. There was more structure, more orientation based on time and place.  Now we must think differently, act differently.

The first glimpse I saw of today's rather disoriented and disorienting world of communication and culture was in Spain in 1999; specifically, in Barcelona, where many people walked around jabbering on mobile phones.  This was not the case in the US: only some used cell phones in this way, and almost every household had access to a land line -- anything from rotary to push button phones.  In the US, it was only around 2001 when things started to become more like what I'd seen in Barcelona; now, on the verge of 2010, people seem way out of the loop if they don't have access to some form of wireless device: such has been the staggering speed of change.  In a couple of decades, we've jumped from answering machines to voice mail, from wondering who is calling to screening incoming calls with digital ID, so that our social forms of communicating are radically changed in ways I have yet to absorb or fully understand.

What we have is a great deal more freedom and flexibility, but also a certain amount of bewilderment and, perhaps, a sort of mass hypnosis combined with some loss in social space for reflection and solitude.  Where are we going, where have we been . . . What do you think? 

Today's Rune:  Strength.

In Search of Lost Time

Three photographs that trace lost time. Above: tornado damage in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, at Moross and Lakeshore. Several tornadoes blasted the Detroit area on July 2, 1997. People were killed at this site (blown out into Lake St. Clair), which I drove by about two hours before this particular tornado struck. I had checked on a work acquaintance's pet dog in St. Clair Shores and was driving to Grosse Pointe to visit a then brother-in-law in the smallest house in that little city, an inner suburb of Detroit; spent the actual event in a basement while it roared overhead.













The Colonial Inn & Restaurant, Hillsborough, North Carolina. This was a cozy place that served southern-style family meals in a historical setting. 153 West King Street; current structure built in 1838. Presently, it is in limbo. For more, here's a link: http://www.colonialinnhillsborough.org/













The Ivy Room in Durham, North Carolina, closed since the mid-1980s after a forty or so year run. This was another cozy place -- with "Chicken in the Rough." An excellent website called Endangered Durham has a nifty entry on the Ivy Room, with photos; a couple of them can be matched with this shot I took in March of 1986, soon after it closed. For more, please see: http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2006/11/ivy-room.html

Today's Rune: Defense.

Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring?

The other day, I was listening to "Editions of You" -- one of the coolest Roxy Music songs, going all the way back to 1973 -- when the lyrics jumped out and seemed perfectly apt for today. A snippet goes this way:

So love, leave me, do what you will

Who knows what tomorrow might bring?
Learn from your mistakes is my only advice
And stay cool is still the main rule
Don't play yourself for a fool
Too much cheesecake too soon
Old money's better than new
No mention in the latest Tribune
And don't let this happen to you . . .

Whatever happens to the Big Three American automakers,

1) it's been a long time coming;

2) it's sad;

3) it'll be weird whatever happens next;

4) maybe there'll be some cool, durable gas sippers that'll break on through to the other side.

I love my sporty two-door 1997 Pontiac Sunfire GT economy wheels (similar to the one above, only in black). I bought my Sunfire used from former co-worker and buddy Trent Vanegas for a great deal at just under 100,000 miles just around 9/11/2001. It now has about 200,000 miles, the AC is long busted and the driver-side window is stuck about an inch down from the top, it's got a dent and the trunk won't open from the outside (but it's still accessible from the back rumble seat). Main thing is, it still runs. Even new, it would have been affordable when credit was readily available. My next car, when it happens, will also be an American car, used. Why, I don't know for sure. Seems like the right thing to do is all, still living in the USA and all.

In other matters, got to see Ingmar Bergan's last major movie, Fanny & Alexander, for the second time since it came out in 1982. Really like it much more than back then -- I'm older if not wiser, and I kind of like the slow pace. Plus, I'm a sucker for existentialism and things Swedish now more than ever.

And let's not forget surrealism, which these days seems more like realism. Here's Catherine Deneuve in Belle de jour, the classic 1967 Luis Buñuel flick. This scene could be called "thinking outside of the box." Oh, ha ha ha.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Looked a Lot Like Che Guevara

War Child, an international organization aiding war orphans / children in war zones, aims to release Heroes, an album of covers matching modern chippie bands with hip singers and bands of the 1960s and 1970s, in 2009. The title alludes to David Bowie's classic 1977 song (and album) "Heroes," recorded in Berlin during the Cold War.

Which reminds me that when I saw David Bowie's show at Detroit's State Theatre in 1997, it did not seem possible that this would be part of his last complete world tour (subsequently, a heart attack and angioplasty in 2003 forced him to significantly moderate his schedule).


September 22, 1997, Earthling tour: Bowie looked like a sprightly guru. I remember him hopping around at one point in bare feet. He was in top form, totally excellent.

Even from Bowie's playlist, one can glimpse his core interests and über coolness.

Songs included:

Always Crashing In The Same Car
Queen Bitch
The Supermen
Waiting For The Man (Velvet Underground)
My Death
The Jean Genie
Panic in Detroit
I'm Afraid Of Americans
Look Back In Anger
Seven Years In Tibet
Battle For Britain
The Man Who Sold The World
Fashion
Stay
Under Pressure
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
Dead Man Walking
V2-Schneider
White Light/White Heat (Velvet Underground)
O Superman! (Laurie Anderson)
All The Young Dudes
Moonage Daydream

[In 2007, The State Theatre was rechristened The Fillmore Detroit; way back -- certainly before I moved to Detroit in 1997 -- it was also known as The Palms, and The Palms' State Theatre].

Today's Rune: Defense.

Mergers and Acquisitions I

Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006), based on Peter Mayle's 2004 novel, stars Russell Crowe, Marion Cotillard (Academy Award-winner for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, 2007), and Albert Finney. A good-natured comedic treatment of conflicting lifestyles and manners (British investment banking vs. French wine country). A nice diversion.

Meanwhile, far too far away from French vineyards, I'm about to shred the rest of my decade-old banking statements. Before I do, it's worth noting some of the economic changes that have been wrought in the past decade.

AMOCO statements. Amoco merged with British Petroleum in December 1998. Today, at BP stations, you can still sometimes see tiny AMOCO logos as a nod to the past.

I had an Amoco card ten years ago. In Detroit, on July 11, 1998, 12.1 gallons of unleaded regular gas cost me $13.76. That's about $1.14/gallon. They called it "Pay Express" -- I guess that was fancy spin for inserting your gas card at the pump and then pumping your own gas. I was driving a small black Dodge Dakota truck at the time.

The last time I ever used my Amoco card was on December 15, 1998, at Fourteen Mile and Ryan, Warren, Michigan: 12.3 gallons for $11.13 = about .91 per gallon.

The Amoco card replaced a Mobil card. On January 10, 1998, most of a full tank cost $12.00 in Detroit. Mobile merged with Exxon to become ExxonMobil in 1999. (The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in 1989.)

Before moving to Detroit in the summer of 1997, I lived in Newport News, Virginia, and had a Texaco card (I was looking for a place to live when the July 2 tornadoes ripped through the Detroit area). Back in Virginia for a final fill up with Texaco in Smithfield, it cost me $10.00. Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001.

These are just gas cards. Today in Detroit, some stations will only take cash now, and others offer a slight discount for cash payments. Most are hovering around $4/gallon.

Shred, shred.


Saw this poster at a school, behind glass: Un amigo siempre está listo para escuchar. "A friend is always ready to listen." Indeed . . .

Today's Rune: Journey.

Changes

Changes since moving to Detroit in 1997 . . .

Mergers and acquisitions. Lots. The end of analog, takeover by digital.

Gone: Jacobson's (Jacobson Stores), Hudson's (The J.L. Hudson Company), Farmer Jack, Harmony House Records, Sam Goody, Arbor Drug, Pioneer Drug.

In decline: Sears, K-Mart, Polaroid, casette tapes, land line phones, letter writing, the American auto industry and manufacturing base, the US dollar, the ecosystem.

On the rise: cell phones / mobile wireless devices, digital TVs, laptops, on demand ordering, online banking, blogs and digital publishing, email, obesity, gas, heating and shipping prices, chain drug stores, super-size warehouse stores, competition from outside the US, the Canadian dollar, the cost of living, unemployment and underemployment, casinos, debt, foreclosure, bankruptcy, flexible living arrangements, Independents.


Detroit leads the way in overall decline of the American Dream.


Making the South look all the more attractive as an alternative. . . . .

Today's Rune: Signals.

Wild, Thin, Mercury Sound

Should be required reading for anyone thinking of volunteering for the Army: Bảo Ninh (Bao Ninh), The Sorrow of War (1991). Life during wartime in Vietnam, fighting for the winning side. A grim take, even grimmer than American novels about the war. Ninh's unit lost more than ninety percent of its young men through fighting and attrition. Briefly banned in Vietnam, now accepted as a deep contemplation on reality.


Lee Harvey Oswald's birthday. Joined the United States Marine Corps at seventeen and derided as "Ozzie Rabbit." A disturbed man, his very existence still haunts us.


Wild man Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) was also born on this day. Here he is with Lee Van Cleef. Some of his best work was completed with Werner Herzog. An interesting documentary on their rough and tumble collaboration is: My Best Fiend / Mein liebster Feind (literally My Dearest Enemy, 1999).


All Kinski needed was love! His memoir is as scary as he looks on screen. It was first released as All I Need Is Love in 1988, then re-released in 1997 as Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski. It is, frankly, compelling.


Candy Lo. Are those permanent tattoos?

Freja Beha Erichsen just being playful. An informal ambassador for Denmark. In Iraq, the fewer than 500 Danish troops who had been stationed near Basra have been downsized to about fifty. Denmark has lost seven killed during the occupation. Denmark has a battalion-sized presence in Afghanistan, too. In that conflict, another seven Danish soldiers have been killed.

Today's Rune: Flow.

Birthdays: Lotte Lenya (Karoline Wilhelmine Blamauer), Miriam Hopkins, Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, Melina Mercouri, Jesse Helms, Chuck Berry, Klaus Kinski, Inger Stevens, Peter Boyle, Dawn Wells, Mike Ditka, Lee Harvey Oswald, Laura Nyro (Nigro), Wendy Wasserstein, Bảo Ninh (Hoàng Ấu Phương), Martina Navratilova (b. Šubertová), Milčo Mančevski, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wynton Marsalis, Rick Moody, Candy Lo, Freja Beha Erichsen.

Vi Ses Senere!

Thirteen Tornadoes

On July 2, 1997, my then-wife and I were supposed to go around and see prospective apartments all day. We had arrived from Virginia the day before. It was hot, we were staying at a teacher's house in Grosse Pointe Woods, watching a dog in exchange and also visiting with the ex's brother and sister-in-law at the smallest most ramshackle house in all of the City of Grosse Pointe. Late in the day, thirteen tornadoes ripped through the area, ranging from Hamtramck to Lake Saint Clair. Just before they struck, we managed to huddle in a tiny basement and watch through a cinder block-sized window as the winds raked overhead, knocking over large trees and power lines like an aerial freight train. It was wild -- seven people in Wayne County were reported killed by this tornadic visitation.

Afterwards, we emerged from underground and saw the widespread destruction -- some of the very places we were about to check out as apartment dwellings now had large elm and oak trees shoved into their roofs and sides. It was surely a sign of things to come living in Metro Detroit. Ten years later, I'm still here, a veteran of surrealistic life and varied surprises.


Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. Though they have four kids, their common law marriage was blown apart by tornadic activity in the form of Luciana Gimenez, a Lebanese Brazilian model.



Tina Turner, another of the sexiest rock stars of all. Her marriage with Ike Turner did not survive tornadic ravages, either.


Korean actress Moon So-ri contemplating various forms of psychic storm damage.

Today's Rune: Signals.

Birthdays: Herman Hesse, René Lacoste, Thurgood Marshall, Ken Curtis, Wibo (Wim Boost), Medgar Evers, Brock Peters (b. George Fisher), Richard Petty (Level Cross, North Carolina), Jerry Hall, Yancy Butler, Moon So-ri, Lindsay Lohan. News flash: Lindsay Lohan is 21! Woo-hoo!

Ciao! Detroit!

Debris Field

Two books about the Iran-Contra scandal shed considerable light on how power really works behind closed doors -- and in full view of the general public.

Michael Lynch and David Bogen provide a dense but fascinating deconstruction of a historical moment in the Reagan Administration with The Spectacle of History: Speech, Text, and Memory at the Iran-Contra Hearings (Duke University Press, 1996), while independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh summarizes the whole fiasco in Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up (W.W. Norton, 1997).

A sample – including Prince Bandar yet again -- from the meticulous Walsh (b. born 1/8/1912, now 95):

Against a backdrop of negative publicity, the Reagan administration . . . sought to increase funding for the Contras [contrarrevolucionarios attempting to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua]. Congress responded by enacting the most severe of the Boland amendments which barred the CIA and the Defense Department as well as any “entity engaged in intelligence activities” from assisting the Contras. . . . . Reagan signed the appropriation acts containing the Boland amendments, but he had no intention of abiding by the restrictions.

First, he [i.e. Ronald Reagan] directed Robert McFarlane to “keep the Contras together body and soul,” ignoring the fact that McFarlane could not do so without breaking the law. McFarlane then invited the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to replace part of the funds withheld by Congress. Bandar arranged a contribution of $1 million a month to the Contras, beginning in mid-1984. At a breakfast meeting with Reagan in early 1985, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz volunteered to double that amount. In all, the Saudis contributed $32 million to the Nicaraguan insurgents.

When the CIA was forced to stop assisting the Contras, Director William Casey reassured the Contra leaders that U.S. support would continue. He and [Duane] Clarridge introduced Oliver North in July 1984 as the Contras’ future government contact. Thereafter, North reported directly to Casey as well as to McFarlane.

Source: Walsh, Firewall, p. 19 of 544.

Birthdays: Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, Cole Porter, Fred Waring, Robert Strange McNamara, Jackie Mason (b. Yacov Moshe Maza), Jackie Wilson (b. Detroit), Johnny Depp, Kaleth Miguel Morales Troya.

Hasta La Vista!

Marie Laveau is Dead and Living in Detroit

I love Detroit. A recent written attack on the city by a white ex-Detroiter left me wondering what all the fuss was about. It's an urban landscape, the immediate population is much smaller than it was in the 1950s and early 1960s, the socio-economic breakdown has shifted radically over time, and now the city is mostly African American. I knew all this when I moved here in 1997.

It is much the same as converting to Catholicism as an adult. There, too, I knew essentially what I was converting into. External critics of both Detroit and Catholicism seem to come in two varieties -- those born into this, now embittered and exiled, and those who never lived anywhere near Detroit who know nothing about it, much like those who despise Catholicism when they know nothing of it from the inside. Sure, Detroit and Catholicism have a convuluted and complex history with lots of conflict and craziness, but what in time hasn't? Much as I love many aspects of Catholicism and disagree with other parts, so it is with my feelings about Detroit.

I enjoy interacting with Detroiters and Catholics and especially with Catholic Detroiters. Both tend to be edgy and interesting. The other day, for instance, a wild-eyed woman sat next to me at a breakfast joint and struck up a pithy conversation, dubbing me "a thinker." She introduced herself as Mary and began talking about saints and sinners, Voodoo and the Iraq War, prisoners, parolees, drug addicts and a certain "Mr. Buzzard." After a while, it felt like this mysterious Detroiter woman was an ecstatic messenger from the big Mary herself. I love moments like that -- Detroit is filled with them. All you have to do is keep an open heart and your wits about you.

Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in Detroit, particularly in Mexicantown, close by the Ambassador Bridge. A new welcome center is opening on the US side, though it was not yet open as of last weekend from what I could tell. A very affordable economy operates in and around Mexicantown. You can have a full spread meal at some of the taquerias for $6 -- including 20% tip. You can bring home a sack of freshly made tamales from La Gloria Bakery and an assortment of baked goods for under $10. Saints candles are less than $2 apiece -- much more reasonably priced than at a suburban New Age shop, and right at the source.



If I was an entrepreneur with tons of capital, I'd want to recreate a French Quarter close by the Detroit River to evoke something New Orleans-like and to provide a new magnet for people gathering along the lines of Mexicantown and Greektown. Detroit was founded by the French in 1701, seventeen years before New Orleans (La Nouvelle-Orléans, 1718) so this is not as outlandish as it might seem. The more downtown apartments, flats, condos, cultural attractions and eateries, the better -- more jazz, more blues, more Creole culture with a Detroit flair, and more emphasis on Detroit's status as a trading center astride the Canadian border. And, for God's sake, more border crossings. I like imagining a new Rivière du Détroit, open to all.


Today's Rune: Flow.

Birthdays: Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Empress Eugénie (b.Doña Maria Eugenia Ignatia Augustina Palafox-Kirkpatrick, Countess of Teba), Tyrone Power, Leo Ryan, Tammy Wynette, Michael Palin, Ian McCulloch.

A salute to Detroit!