Back in the USA

My webhost has permanently lost a couple of dozen photos in the body of this blog. Luckily I have backups for everything, but I can't replace them till I get back to my home computer.

I'm in New York at the moment. It's a weird time to be here. The city is crawling with cops. When I got off a suburban train from Grand Central earlier this week, I was met by a television news crew asking me and anyone with baggage or a baby stroller if we had seen enhanced security. I had just seen one cop with a German shepherd. I don't think it will ever be possible to control all the people on commuter and subway trains and still have the trains be useful as public transport for millions.

If Al Qaeda really wanted to change American policies, rather than just kill crowds of innocent people, it would attack the people who voted for George W. Bush in places like Kansas and Texas and Montana, rather than the solid blue-state voters of New York, Los Angeles and Washington. But terrorists are not rational. They just want to kill. In every country there are men looking for a righteous excuse to kill and feel good about it. It must be part of human nature. I think mothers should be the only ones to vote.

My young cousin D is going to be sent to Iraq in the next month. The army has spent a great deal of money and more than a year training D in a specialty that is worthless in Iraq. Now one of the kindest young men I know is going to be interrogating Iraqi prisoners. They won't know he is a good brother, a kind cousin, generous and thoughtful to old people, and sweet-natured. I hope he still is when he comes back. If he comes back. He is supposed to be there for two years. D joined to get enough money for college. He is  poor and from southern Louisiana. If you are religious, please pray for him.

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Here are a few things my expat eyes see coming back to New York, where I lived years ago.

--American flags everywhere. On tall buildings, on cabs, behind counters in delis, on schools and posters and bank windows and pins on people's hats. In Europe, you rarely see a national flag except on a government building. Not even on the post office in France.

--God on television. Services of every kind on Sunday, people talking about God on news programs, people pouring out of churches and being interviewed, just lots of visible religion. In most of Europe, religion is for the upper class, the peasants, and the Muslims. In France only 10% of people set foot in a church all year.

--The little coffee shops I used to go to on lunch break from my office job have mostly disappeared. Now it's takeout delis (people must go back to their desks?), lots of Starbucks and chain restaurants, and fancier "gourmet" Italian and French names.

--Americans are getting used to loss of privacy. People ask you your telephone number everywhere you go. I just say no and get puzzled, "You're not from here" looks.

--The cell phones don't work well here. In Europe, you pretty much have coverage everywhere. In Paris, you can use your cell phone (called a portable) in the metro or even in the long tunnels going to the airport. Changing countries is no problem. Text messaging is very common. Here, sometimes I feel as if I have taken a step ten years backward in time. There are so many places where only no one, or only one person, can use his phone, while other people with cell phones are cut off.

--There is garbage everywhere. Garbage bags, boxes and food all over the sidewalks. In Paris, garbage is picked up daily, except Sundays. It seems strange that in a much hotter climate, New Yorkers wouldn't be willing to pay for daily pickup.

--Oh and the weather. It was cold in France so I unimaginatively brought my turtlenecks, sweaters and a trench coat, and was met in New York by 80-degree weather and a mugginess pas possible. Then it rained and rained and rained in furious floods (I had brought a hat instead of an umbrella-- rain is misty in Europe). I melted into a soggy puddle until the weather finally turned cool and pleasant yesterday.

--Young Americans are less and less well educated. People you deal with in service positions rarely have any response to a problem if they have not been told how to deal with it. They can't spell, they can't write, they can't add, they don't know where France is. They compare very ill with young people I know from eastern Europe, where the average teenager has an education that puts most American colleges to shame.

I am reading a book called What's the Matter With Kansas? by Thomas Frank. It's about how Kansas, which used to be considered a hotbed of radical farmers, is now one of the most conservative places in the U.S. I have seen a change like that in my own lifetime in southern Louisiana, which used to be so Democratic that the only real election battles were within the party, to see who got the Democratic nomination. Now southern Louisiana (except New Orleans) is so solidly Republican that people are afraid to say they are Democrats.

Comments

[ptinfrance]

yes. the world is insane...but especiallly in the u.s.