Armchair Travel
Friday, June 27, 2008
  Who Is The True Friend?
I had the great good fortune, just last night, of bringing together two indomitable forces of nature, and golly was it ever fun to watch.

Susanne Hoder gave a moving and insightful presentation about her visit to the Holy Land and ace videographer Sonya Starr got it all on film.

Soon you won't have to take my word for it; it will be posted on the internet and aired on public access stations across the country and presented to churches, synagogues, mosques and community groups, and you can judge for yourself whether I am talking through my hat.

It's even remotely possible that one or two reporters from the mainstream media might discover the importance of this message to the future of the human race. Not likely, but possible.

I hesitate to characterize the presentation, because you really have to see the whole thing. Susanne, who grew up in Georgia farm country, forms a real bond with her hosts in Palestine and Israel through their love of the land.

It's not a diatribe against the Israelis. She shows an understanding of their need for security and compassion for the victims of violence on both sides.

But when she gets to the bulldozing of orchards and vineyards and olive groves, the landfills and the sewage literally dumped on the tiny bits of farmland left to the Palestinians, the Israeli-only highways, the hijacking of the water supply, the students denied permission to further their education abroad, the emergency patients dying at checkpoints...

Gradually it starts to sink in. We're paying for this, and we can stop it.

I learned last night about the strength of the movement in Israel for Palestinian rights. A lot of very wise and compassionate Israeli citizens, and Jews around the world, are working hard to put an end to this systematic strangulation of economic and social life in the occupied territories, which is just as bad for Israel as a nation as it is for the Palestinians.

And they're thinking what I'm thinking: a little dose of the D-word. Divestment. It worked quickly and expeditiously in South Africa. We don't have to wait for the US government to do this. We can get it going right away.

Investors tend to be skittish, and they have lots of safe options to switch their money to. And more and more investment services are shying away from socially objectionable companies doing business in countries that delineate more than one class of citizens.

Because it was so effective against apartheid in South Africa, the D-word gives a lot of powerful people the willies. That's why Susanne has been targeted by person or persons unknown. Recently someone posted an entry on Wikipedia that accused her of denying the Holocaust.

This is a coldly calculated smear; but don't ask me. Ask the United Methodist Church, the YMCA, the Boy Scouts of America or the PTA.

In fact a friend of Susanne's, a Holocaust survivor, is active in promoting divestment from the companies who are profiting from the occupation. I'm going to see if I can bring him to this area to speak. And we'll get that on video, too.

Jimmy Carter says that Americans don't want to know and many Israelis don't want to know what is happening in Palestine.

Americans don't want to know about radon, either, as many newspaper editors have told me when I submitted stories about it, even though, if you have it in your water and you take a shower, it's equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.

Socrates posed the question: Is the true friend one who praises you all the time, no matter what, or the person who tells you the truth even when you don't want to hear it?

It's time for America to be a true friend to the Israeli people.
 
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
  The Big Day
I'm getting ready for the big day, and my advice to myself is, "Keep your mouth shut."

I've invited my friend Susanne Hoder to give a presentation here in the Pioneer Valley, at the Jones Library in Amherst, at 7 pm today, Thursday, June 26, about her experience in Palestine. We're making a video of the presentation.

And the fact is, no one cares what Stephen Hartshorne has to say about the conflict in the Holy Land, not even me. What do I know?

My solution would be to evacuate all the holy sites and destroy them with a tactical nuclear device and buy everybody a condo in Palm Beach. That would save a lot of money and bring about world peace, but it's never going to happen.

I contend that every American citizen should hear what Susanne Hoder has to say about what's going on in Palestine.

King Hussein of Jordan, in an interview with the Washington Post earlier this week, talked about the importance of reaching a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the window closes, which may be soon. And we can!

We just have to reach out to our brothers and sisters in Israel and, with respect and consideration for their safety, remind them of the ideals on which their country was founded, just as Harry Golden, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, told American southerners in the 40s, 50s and 60s that segregation was morally wrong.

It's a big issue that America doesn't want to know about, but we have to.

Jimmy Carter, is he a liar? Is he a fool? I don't think so. Here's what he has to say:

"Americans don't want to know, and many Israelis don't want to know, what is going on inside Palestine. It's a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine.

"And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land. I think it's accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I'm familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to to their legal boundaries or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good faith peace talks. There hasn't been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years.

"So this is a taboo subject. And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out, as I've just described, they would probably not be back in Congress the next term."

Do we want to live in a republic where the penalty is political death for telling us what we do not wish to know?

In 1972 in Munich, some demented idiots from Palestine killed eleven Israeli Olympic athletes. This was a terrible, stupid crime. Thirty-six years later, we cannot keep on punishing innocent people in Palestine for a crime they had nothing to do with.

Abraham Lincoln was informed, during the Civil War, that Confederate forces were murdering Union troops who were African Americans. He was asked to authorize the execution of Conferederate officers. He authorized the execution of any Confederate officers who could be proved to have murdered Union troops.

We need to apply the same principle in Palestine. You can't punish innocent people. Not with our money. Not in our name. Because America is not just standing idly by. We're paying for the wall with billions of our tax dollars. We have the power to change this, just by learning what we do not want to know.

And, intractable as the conflict may seem, it is really a petty territorial conflict, in global terms, and its resolution could eliminate enormous barriers that now exist between the West and the Islamic world. Don't ask me. Ask King Abdullah of Jordan, a proven friend of America.

Our goal with this video is just to begin to pull aside the curtain that has shielded us from what we do not want to know. Just to begin to tug at the curtain. Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz.

For those of you who can't make it to the Jones Library, we'll be posting the video on YouTube.
 
  Two Humps for Jack Madden
I'm having tremendous fun with Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, edited by William Butler Yeats. As I mentioned, these stories about "the good people" or "the gentry," as they are known, are very unlike the popular notion of a fairy tale.

Take "The Legend of Knockgrafton" by T. Crofton Croker. It tells the tale of the likeable hunchback Lusmore. Lusmore is really good at weaving straw hats and baskets, and although he's harmless, "some ill-minded persons had set strange stories about him afloat."

One night he's on his way home from a neighboring town, and he realizes he can't make it home, and he lies down by the old castle of Knockgrafton.

"Presently there rose a wild strain of unearthly melody upon the ear of little Lusmore; he listened, and he thought that he had never heard such ravishing music before... The words of the song were these: Da Luan, Da Mort, Da Luan, Da Mort, Da Luan, Da Mort when there would be a moment's pause, and then the round of melody went on again..."

Lusmore loves the song, and begins to sing along, but he adds a little lick during the pause: "When Da Luan Da Mort had been sung three times, he took up the tune and raised it with the words angus Da Dardeen."

"The fairies, when they heard this addition to the tune, were so much delighted that, with instant resolve, it was determined to bring the mortal among them, and little Lusmore was conveyed into their company with the eddying speed of a whirlwind."

They say, "Lusmore! Lusmore!/ Doubt not, nor deplore/ For the hump which you bore/ On your back is no more;/ Look down on the floor/ And view it, Lusmore!"

To make a long story somewhat shorter, they get rid of his hump and give him a new suit of clothes and he turns into a handsome young man that no one in the village even recognizes.

Okay, that part is a lot like a conventional fairy story. Now the second part.

A woman on the other side of Ireland who has a son with a hump on his back hears about Lusmore's miraculous cure and sends a friend to ask him about it. Lusmore tells his story, and the woman takes her son, whose name is Jack Madden, to Knockgrafton to try to get rid of his hump in the same way.

But Jack Madden is not very musical and he flunks the fairy test big time.

"Jack Madden, who was in a great hurry to get quit of his hump, never thought of waiting until the fairies had done, or watching for a fit opportunity to raise the tune higher again than Lusmore, so out he bawls, never minding the time or the humour of the tune, or how he could bring his words in properly, angus Da Dardeen angus Da Hena."

The fairies get mad and bring him in and say, "Jack Madden! Jack Madden!/Your words came so bad in/The tune we felt glad in,/ That your life we may sadden;/ Here's two humps for Jack Madden."

So they take Lusmore's hump and stick it on his back.

"...And what through the weight of his other hump, and the long journey, he died soon after, leaving, they say, his heavy curse to any one who would go listen to fairy tunes again."

Not exactly a happily-ever-after kind of ending; but I can tell, people who regularly hold open jam sessions are going, "Right on!"
 
Thursday, June 19, 2008
  Herschel, Give Me a Hand Here
In 1904, Herschel Goldhirsch, then two years old, arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from a shetl in what is now Ukraine and was then Austria. The next year his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and you can read all about his childhood in his delightful, educational books Only in America, For 2 Cents Plain, Enjoy, Enjoy and several others, published under his American name, Harry Golden.

In 1942, Golden moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where, for 26 years, he published The Carolina Israelite, which you might call a blog in the age of print. Sometimes it was about the foods of the Lower East Side, sometimes it was about Augustus and Sextus Pompeius, and sometimes it was about Governeur Morris and the wife of LaFayette. My kind of stuff.

Golden took an active role in community affairs and community organizations like the Rotary, but he consistently pointed out to his friends and neighbors that segregation was morally wrong.
He did it politely, and with respect, and even humor, but he never, in any way, diminished the wrongness of it.

Harry Golden was honored by Martin Luther King in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, in which he scorched white moderates, saying he'd rather deal with the Ku Klux Klan, but listed five writers who understood the urgency of his cause. Harry Golden was on that list.

My friend and hero Susanne Hoder was a little girl in Georgia during the Civil Rights Movement, and she remembers representatives of the local synagogue coming to her church and speaking out for the rights of all Americans, just like Harry Golden.

Now it's time for all Americans to say to our allies, the Israelis, that what they are doing to the Palestinians is morally wrong.

The problem is that most Americans know next to nothing of the wall and the sewage and the toxic waste being dumped in the West Bank, or the Israeli-only highways (no Christians or Muslims allowed) or the deprivation of water and building permits of all kinds.

They probably have never had a child die because of delays at a checkpoint. They probably haven't had a year's harvest of grapes spoil because of a closure in the wall.

They probably haven't seen their grandmother shot dead for a curfew violation that turns out not to be a violation. They have not seen the bomb fragments on the pavement that read "Made in USA". I'm not making this up.

Because of the realities of electoral politics, no candidate, not even Barack Obama, can criticize the government of Israel and expect to be elected. That's why it would be a great time for American Jews to step up. They're the only ones who can do so effectively without being accused of supporting terrorists.

The solution of this problem is vital not only for world peace and for the economic and social survival of the Palestinian people. It's vital for the survival of Israel as well. Ariel Sharon, the deliberate instigator of the second intifada, saw this in his old age, and other enllightened Israelis see it too, writ plainly on the wall.

If Israel is to remain a democracy, it will have to end the occupation, or it will go the way of South Africa, its erstwhile ally. If you don't believe me, hold a seance and talk to Harry Golden.
 
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
  The Good People
Talk about your great reads for a quarter. I found a copy of Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, edited by William Butler Yeats. A big fat book full of great stories. And one of the great things about it is that these are not anything like most people's idea of fairy tales.

They're not neat. There's no inspirational formula, no consistent triumph of good over evil, no guarantee of a happy ending, far from it, and the lessons learned, though powerful, are not neat either. They are like the lessons of life, and a hard life at that.

For one thing the trooping fairies are not always benevolent with regard to human beings. Why should they be? And some stories suggest they aren't always on good terms with one another, either. They are said to steal children and paralyze people and livestock. Not that they don't have their reasons.

A lot of people refer to the good people as Lepracauns [Yeats' spelling], but that's actually a more specialized term meaning shoemaker. The Lepracauns are rich because they make a lot of shoes (and presumably sell them). Then there's the Cluricaun who gets drunk in wine cellars, the House spirit, the Water-sheerie, the Banshee, the Dallahan (headless phantom) and the Pooka.

The Pooka in the play and the Jimmy Stewart movie 'Harvey' is a six-foot-plus rabbit, but Pookas can be a lot of different animal spirits.

One thing I've noticed about all these spirits is that they all seem to be very up to date on everything that goes on among the human population. Whenever a human meets a fairy or a group of fairies, they all know him by name and they know his family and they seem to have read some kind of dossier detaiing everything he ever said or did.

Teig O'Kane, for example, a young rich hell raiser, is walking home very late one night and meets twenty tiny guys lugging a dead body and one of them says, "Isn't it lucky we met you Teig O'Kane."

"Teig, Teig," the little man says, "you're living a bad life, and we can make a slave of you now, and you cannot withstand us..." They give him some grief, make him carry the body around and bury it, but they let him off easy and he changes his ways.

Pat Driver, the tinker, sees four fairies carrying a body and gets scared and hides in a pile of straw. The fairies start arguing over whose turn it is to carry the body and one of them says, "There's Pat Driver in under the straw. Why wouldn't he tak' his turn?"

Then there's Jack Dogherty, who meets a Merrow (merman) on the beach. "Your servant, sir," says Jack.

"Your servant, kindly, Jack Dogherty," answered the Merrow.

"To be sure, then, how well your honor knows my name!" said Jack.

"Why, man, I knew your grandfather..."

Then there's Daniel O'Rourke who gets "the same thing as tipsy, almost" and falls into a river and gets swept to an island and then gets stuck in a swamp.

"All of a sudden the moon grew black, and I looked up... and down it came with a pounce and looked me full in the face; and what was it but an eagle? as fine a one as ever flew from the kingdom of Kerry. So he looked at me in the face and says he to me, 'Daniel O'Rourke,' says he, 'how do you do?'"

It's like Cheers -- everybody knows your name.
 
Thursday, June 05, 2008
  High Gas Prices -- Where's the Downside?
Have you heard all the disastrous news? First of all, Detroit is cancelling orders for low-mileage vehicles like trucks and SUVs. People are crowding into underground and above-ground moving modules which the socialistic Europeans call public transportation.

The value of energy innovations like solar panels or wind turbines is always calculated by the money they can save or generate, and this is always based on the price of the fuel oil or gasoline they would save. All these innovations have become more valuable, so the 'invisible hand' of the free market will now favor them.

So higher fuel prices have reduced the production of obscene fuel-wasting vehicles, increased the use of buses and trains, and increased the economic viability of effective alternative solutions.

I'm still looking for the downside. Okay, the farmers and the salesmen get screwed. But no one worries about the salesmen and the farmers always get screwed, except, maybe, the ones who use draft horses or oxen... Would it be too terrible if we had more of them?

Let's also consider the terrible consequences for the Indy 500, NASACAR and monster truck exhibitions. Often these public displays of wastefulness have had to be cut back or cancelled altogether. How sad does that make me?

I personally feel they should run the Indy 500 with Freddy Flintsone cars. Just try it once. That's all I ask.

But don't ask me about high gas prices. Ask Click and Clack of Car Talk. They -- if anyone does -- understand America's love affair with the automobile, but they, like me, deplore the tax subsidies SUV owners have enjoyed and they have proposed a sizeable gas tax, several dollars per gallon.

Their argument is impeccably presented, and in my opinion, cannot be disputed. Without going into details, I will just say that at the end of the six- or seven-year period they project, the price of gasoline will have escalated to the same level it would have achieved without the tax, but during that time we, the American people, will have put aside a sizeable amount of money to throw around irresponsibly or put toward viable new solutions.

In the interests of full disclosure, I commute five miles to work and I drive a 1996/1997 Honda that paid for itself two years ago. The last two months I've been biking to work, but not for economic reasons.
 
Monday, June 02, 2008
  The Quick-Thinking Duncan Dhu
This blog is chiefly about great reads for a quarter, but it seems reasonable to include great reads for a dollar, too. And one of the greatest reads for a dollar, for anyone who loves Scotland, especially, but for everyone else too, is Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.

You can almost always find it for a buck, but you might want to pay a bit more for an edition with good illustrations. You'll get a better picture of the miser uncle. It's a rippin' good read. There are no real pirates -- for those you have to read Treasure Island -- but you'll get a guided tour of the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides in 1751.

You'll visit lively destinations like Balluchulish, Corrynakiegh and Balquhidder.

You'll build your word power with words like philabeg, boddle and perliecue.

The narrator, David Balfour, is a Lowlander who gets kidnapped through the connivance of the miser uncle Ebenezer and escapes with the assistance of Alan Breck (Stewart), a Highlander, with whom he shares many vicissitudes, which I won't go into except to say that they are what make the book such a grippin good read. We learn that Alan is an excellent swordsman with a bit of a temper.

So at Balquhidder, where "no great clan holds rule," David is wicked sick and he and Alan have sought refuge in the cottage of Duncan Dhu (Maclaren), who will soon surprise us with his quick thinking.

Alan runs into Robert Oig (Macgregor), a son of Rob Roy, who is famous for a cocktail, and apparently there is no love lost between their families. But both men are wanted by the English, who had clobbered the Highlanders at Culloden in 1745, etc., etc. so a duel would be bootless. Here's the dialogue:

"I did not know that you were in my country, sir?" says Robin.

"It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the Maclarens," says Alan.

"That's a kittle [ticklish] point," returned the other. "There may be two words to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your sword?"

[Highlanders frequently use the future perfect tense in situations of this kind.]

"Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that," says Alan. "I am not the only man that can draw steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that the Macgregor had the best of it."

"Do you mean my father sir?" says Robin. [This is getting extremely personal.]

"Well I wouldnae wonder," says Alan.

"My father was an old man," returned Robin. "The match was unequal. You and me would make a better pair, sir."

"I was thinking of that," said Alan.

I was half out of bed [says the narrator], and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. It's lan ault dispute which one of ye's the best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it."

Then Duncan Dhu "made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of old whiskey, strained honey and sweet cream."

[More quick thinking by a guy who doesn't want his home wrecked and a body on his hands]

So they quaff some brose and have a piping contest and Robin wins. Who's the judge? Alan himself. After besting him in the variations contest, Robin plays the ancestral tune of the Appin Stewarts, and beautifully, too. Like a Yankee band playing "Dixie."

"Robin Oig," he [Alan] said when it was done, "ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Ye have mair musin in yer sporran [purse] than I have in my head. And although it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand -- it'll no be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle [skewer] a man that can blow the pipes as ye can!"

Way to go, Duncan Dhu!
 
Literary gadfly Stephen Hartshorne writes about books that he finds at flea markets and rummage sales.

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Stephen Hartshorne worked in newspapers and magazines around New England for many years and served as Information Officer in the New Hampshire Senate under Senate President Vesta Roy. He worked as a material handler for nine years at the Yankee Candle Company until the company was taken over by corporate weasels. He is currently the associate editor of GoNOMAD.com, an alternative travel website, which gives him the opportunity to correspond with writers and photographers all over the world. He lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts, with his daughter Sarah, a student at Drew University, and their cat, Dwight D. Eisenmeower. This blog is dedicated to his mom, who made him bookish.

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