March 29, 2009

Banks and the Free Market

Robert Misik wrote an interesting article in this week’s Freitag, a German newspaper, Misik discusses the problem of presenting alternatives to our present capitalist system. The word “socialism” is often heard in leftist circles and the tone of the mainstream debate on how to rescue the system sounds much more radical than we’ve heard in a long time. Across the party spectrum in Germany the ideas of nationalizing banks has become normal.
One thing he spoke of is particularly noteworthy. He mentioned how the financial sector is innately unsuitable for the game of free market capitalism. Actors in the free market are subject to the dangers of risk. This is what makes the system more “efficient”. If a company or even a market sector fails to survive the dog-eat-dog fight on the field, they collapse and disappear. A particular company may be eaten up by a competitor or their business may simply close and their products disappear. Banks, on the other hand, can not collapse or simply file for bankruptcy and then open up shop down the street. A bank has it’s customers money on their books. The federal government insures that the customers will not lose their money in case the bank fails. This means a bank can partake in risky business without fear of bankruptcy.
Up until the 1980’s the US had a system of stringent regulations to prevent banks from abusing this situation. The deregulation in the era of neoliberalism has presented banks and other financial institutions with an invitation to take advantage of the system. Today we have a situation where financial institutions are broke, they don’t have the collateral for the money they have lent. They can’t be allowed to go bankrupt like businesses in other sectors because customers would lose their savings. This all shows that banks should either be nationalized or more strictly regulated. I would vote for nationalization. In the last 20 years we’ve seen how easy it is to abolish a regulatory system.

March 26, 2009

Who made this mess?

Matt Taibbi’s piece in this weeks Rolling Stone Magazine is a great analysis on how the US got into the mess it’s in. What are credit-default swaps and how do they help a few schmucks get filthy rich? Why are huge banks and insurance companies allowed to carry out their business with virtually no governmental oversight?
There’s no doubt the US economy, and the whole world’s for that matter, is in big trouble. Not much to debate on that. The question is how we got into this mess in the first place. Taibbi presents a convincing argument that specific political decisions (most under a Democratic clock) are responsible. It was all legal. AIG and Citibank were given free reign when Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which essentially began a cycle of massive deregulation of the finance industry. It laid the ground work for such dubious constructs as credit-default swaps (CDS). These god-awful things would simply have been illegal prior to the deregulation craze of the 90’s. Credit-default swaps essentially allow financial institutions (you can’t just call them banks anymore) to lend money without significant (or in some cases without any) cash reserves to back those loans. They are basically lending money they don’t have and raking in the interest.
It’s not a morality issue. You can’t expect bankers not to take advantage of the system if the government invites them to do it. It’s the US government making conscious decisions about deregulating the financial industry. Some argue that it’s all so difficult to understand. Is that an excuse for passing stupid laws? If a Congressman doesn’t understand a law he just signed, then he’s either negligent or corrupt. Both of which are reason enough to throw him out of office. Those congressmen who did actually understand what it meant to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act (a law from the thirties which prevented banks from selling insurance) should also be dethroned. Why weren’t they all thrown out of office? Was it all too complicated for the public to understand? Taibbi argues that the Democrats got behind deregulation because they were in search of a new, wealthy base for financing their elections.
So we had a situation of greedy Democrats looking for generous campaign contributors and happy, go-lucky Republicans always game on helping their rich friends get richer. They went about tearing down a system of checks and balances that had prevented banks from acting like madmen. Now we have the US folk bailing out AIG because their “too big to fail”. Here in Germany they’ve come up with great doublespeak, calling companies like AIG “system relevant”. People seem to be buying it. We can’t let ‘em fail or our whole system will collapse like a house of cards. If we don’t want the house to collapse on our heads then we better at least start dismantling it and start building a new one.

The Big Takeover
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine, March 19th, 2009
It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
Read the rest...

March 21, 2009

Does the USA need universal health care?

Whether or not the present democratic president and the overwhelmingly democratic Congress will manage to pass a universal health care package is still up in the air. I’m not up on the latest state of the debate except to hear that Obama is against the “single-payer system” and that this is causing quite a stir among liberals. Single payer would be something like Medicare. All pay into a single, government-run pot and a public institution runs the program. Canada has such a “Medicare for all” system. I haven’t yet understood why some are so adamant about single-payer. It would get the private insurers out of the system and, assumedly, reduce general costs compared to a mixed system like in Germany where insurance companies are involved. It works here in Germany that you have highly regulated insurance companies administering all social insurance payments and expenditures. I just hope that the debate about which kind of universal health care system doesn’t kill the chances of implementing getting the system installed.
It would appear that there is now a general consensus in the country that health care for all is necessary. The majority believes that it’s simply the right thing to do. Not only would universal health care help contain runaway health costs, it would patch a big whole in the social safety net left unfilled by Roosevelt and his New Deal.
The initial costs of subsidies for universal health care are very high. They are estimated at over $150 billion per year. That’s a heck of a lot of money. It just happens to be about the same amount money, however, that the government could additionally take in on tax revenue if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire after 2010. That’s no-brainer I would say. Let the rich pay a bit more in taxes and you’ve already got enough money to pay for the necessary subsidies.

What’s the right up to these days?

Living in Germany I’m not totally up on the goings on in the world of American media propaganda. Sometimes, though, I catch little glimpses of what’s going on. It seems that comics are becoming a favored tool of conservatives to animate their followers and convert the fence sitters. Within just a few weeks three different comic strips crossed my digital desk. Taken together they smell fishy.

The first one was the comic strip published in the New York Post in February. A dead chimpanzee was portrayed with a two big bullet holes in his chest. Two white policeman stood above him, one with a smoking gun in his hand saying “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill”. The reference was obviously to Obama, the racist undertones not subtle at all. A cry of outrage followed and the disturbing news made it all the way across the Atlantic.

The next one was sent to me as an email attachment by a conservative member of my extended family. There were at least 20 further recipient addresses visible in the email. The sender commented the comic strip with, “Do I need to say anything else?”. It was a Wizard of Id comic strip. Obama, being portrayed as the king is giving an election speech to the peasants. Hi announces that he promises, “FREE healthcare, FREE education, FREE housing and jobs for everyone”. After asking whether there are any questions, a peasant asks “What do we need JOBS for.

The last comic strip had an illustration of a condom with friendly face. He jokes that a condom best describes the present administration’s policies:
“A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.”
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. It does seem funny to me, though, that within 60 days of an Obama Administration these comics have been appearing. The radical right certainly works in mysterious ways and I’m certain they’re waiting in the wings to attack and fight any policy changes that might help create a more equal and just society.

March 16, 2009

Health Insurance and Weizenbier

For about the first half of my 20 year visit here in Germany people always asked me one of three questions upon meeting me:
“Man, how could you move from Southern California to Germany?”
The multitude of innuendoes with this question, at least my interpretation thereof, included the assumption that life in Southern California with it’s weather, beaches and movie stars, can not be topped. By leaving all that for cold, rainy, grey Germany I must be a bit crazy.
“When are you going to go back to America?”
The innuendos here were not very subtle. Certainly, my new friends must have thought, I wasn’t planning on staying here. At the time I didn’t think of it in this way, but it’s not a very welcoming question to pose to a potential immigrant.
“How did you learn German so well?”
In retrospect this question is also full of subtle allusions. Why, for one, would people so often be surprised by my almost fluent German? Could one reason be that so many immigrants to Germany speak such poor German? A lot of them do, I must admit. Many Americans I have met here have a pretty heavy accent. It’s particularly difficult for US Americans to adopt to the soft, partially rolled “r” typical to German. The stark American “err” is common and does little to help reduce the German’s joking about Americans speaking as if they had chewing gum in their mouths.
I don’t mean to make it all sound so terrible. The Germans are actually not that bad. My encounters with Germans (you run into them all over the place here) have been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve tried to give up judging a population and basing my impressions on my experiences. I am pretty sure, at any rate, that the questions a German immigrant in America is confronted with are quite different.
Anyways, having been so often asked when I’m going back “home” and why I moved here has made me continually reflect on the question of my life here in Germany. Why have I remained here for so long? Am I happy here? What would my life be like if I were in the US. I won’t go into all those questions here. That could get boring. I would, however, like to mention one issue that often pops into my head when I compare life here with life in the US.
Health insurance! Yes, it’s health insurance that always came to mind when someone asked me why I don’t want to move back to the US. Funny, huh! I was a young man upon first arriving in Germany (I mean, I’m still young, but back then I was r e a l l y young.) I was in my early twenties, going to college, traveling Europe with my girlfriend, why would health insurance come to mind. Wouldn’t the main advantages I would have perceived been things like free college education, easy and inexpensive travel opportunities to places like Paris, Rome and Amsterdam? Or what about the Oktoberfest, Bratwurst and the Black Forest? Admittedly those fringe benefits have been enjoyable (except for the Oktoberfest). Other, less exotic things, though, have also kept me from fleeing back across the Atlantic to Mom, baseball and apple pie.
The frequent visits to my village doctor convinced me that the Old World had something to offer that I would not find back home. It’s called universal health care and it’s as normal here as Weizenbier. After moving out of the student dorms, I lived in a small village a few miles outside of Tübingen with my girlfriend. We had a small flat with a big view of the surrounding farmland and forests. The population was around 2000. A two-lane highway cut through the center of the village, forming an unnatural division. To get to Dr. Möck I had to push the pedestrian walk button and wait for the traffic light to switch. The strong sense of social control prevented me from even considering darting across before the light switched. I had learned a tough lesson about jaywalking within a few weeks of arrival. At a busy intersection in the main city I crossed another two lane street on red after having seen that no cars were coming. As I safely reached the other side a small boy, perhaps 10, stood in front of my path and literally yelled at me “Denken Sie nicht an die Kinder?”, “Why don’t you think about the children?” My German wasn’t very good yet, but I immediately got the essence of his outrage. I was a bad example for the children by crossing the street on red. This social component of life here was a hard lesson for a California kid like me.
I enjoyed my visits to my village doctor. His practice was in the second floor of a residential house, certainly a century old. The creaky sound of the steps leading up to his practice and the wooden beams on the ceiling of the waiting room gave proof of this. The doctor’s friendly eyes, set behind his round, wire-framed glasses, helped me relax. “So, what’s bothering you”, he asked. “Oh not much. I have been having stomach aches lately and was wondering if you had something for me”, I asked. “Tell me about your diet”, he asked. I told him that I’ve been a vegetarian for about a year and have even experimented with a vegan diet. He was surprised about that and said that I should consider eating some animal products. “One shouldn’t go to extremes”, he recommended. When I told him I didn’t even eat eggs, he urged me to give them another try. “Eggs are full of essential vitamins and minerals”, he explained.
I left his office that day, took a long walk through the cold, dark forest and concluded to loosen my stringent diet. I became a part-time vegetarian. This may not be the best proof of a functioning health care system, but it was my first introduction to one and for me it was convincing. Whenever I felt sick, at least more sick than just the normal cold or flu, I didn’t hesitate to go visit my Dr. Möck. I must admit, in my first year in Germany I went to the doctor more than my previous 10 years in the US. After the first couple years of euphoric free doctor visiting, my visits slowed down dramatically. Now, twenty years later, doctors visits are still free (since about 2 years patients must pay an 8 dollar “practice fee” when visiting a doctor) and I still enjoy going to my “house doctor”, as they call them here. I haven’t been to him, though, in ages. The last time was about 2 years ago when I injured my knee playing soccer. I certainly belong to the percentile of the population who pays in way more than they take out. I don’t, however, have any qualms about that. Perhaps one day someone in my family will be unlucky enough to need expensive medical care.
14,5% of my pre tax monthly paycheck goes to my health insurance plan. My employer is required by law to match that amount. This percentile is the same across the board, regardless of age, geography, genetic disorders, whatever. It is a lot of money, but apparently way less than what the typical American pays. It’s important to note that my insurance plan is mandatory and it covers basically everything (homeopathy, Bach Flowers and acupuncture are, unfortunately, not included). My three kids are covered, my wife is covered through her employer. We as a family basically do not have any concerns that if someone gets sick we will run into financial difficulties. Adults do have to pay for a certain percentage of prescription drugs, children are do not.
I am not too familiar with the situation in the US. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived there and lots has changed in those year. I was quite shocked, however, to hear of a friend in the US who had to pay for the hospital costs of her child’s birth. That concept is totally unthinkable for a German. On a radio program I heard the story of a family who was forced to sell their house and move into their car in order to pay their medical bills.
Perhaps these are exaggerated anecdotes. As far as I can tell, though, the US system is extremely expensive, ineffective and unfair. The US is the only Western country without universal health care. I would not feel at ease with a family of three kids if I had to wonder how we were going to cover the medical costs if my son had influenza or my daughter broke her arm. Maybe a new wind is blowing in America these days and the country will manage to overcome whatever it is that has kept it from installing such a basic form of social welfare.

March 11, 2009

Back to Basics

(*I first wrote this back in October, 2008, when the world was still intact.)

The White House and the US Congress have handed over billions of dollars to the ailing financial industry and is getting ready to pass on billions more to the auto industry. Many argue that these bailouts are necessary to prevent further damage, to stop the loss of millions of jobs. Henry Paulson’s moving plea to House Leader Nancy Pelosi (is there not a picture of that anywhere?) was grounded on such fears. If AIG was allowed to failed the international ramifications would have been catastrophic.
What does this mean for the state of our economy? Does it represent a major turning point or has the volume just been turned up on a policy pattern long since in practice? My gut feeling is that something radical is changing. On the other hand one doesn’t have to look far to find examples of government bailing out big biz when it’s in troubled waters. For me it brings the myth of free market capitalism into the light. Milton Friedman and his Chicago School were not as successful as they are made out to be. Who can honestly argue that the US economic system over the past 30 years has been allowed to run free of government intervention? The Chrysler bailout of ’79 and the S&L crisis of the 1980s are glaring examples of government jumping in to save the sinking ship. We could take a look at NAFTA to again clearly demonstrate governments biased role in US and world economics.
Take a look at US military intervention and try to figure what that has to do with “free market” capitalism. Were US and international food distributors vying for contracts in Iraq after 2003 have a level playing field? Could it possibly be that certain companies like Halliburton and KBR had preferential treatment?
What sort of a predicament are we in? We are living through a phase of capitalistic growth financed and defended by the public sector and payed for by the private sector. The tragic consequences are felt by many, speculated upon by some and concealed by a few. Are we all just a bunch of lemmings heading for the cliff? Do we want to blindly stand around and watch Washington bury the last hopes of a healthy future?
The US government, opinion makers, elite and the populace in general needs to reorient priorities. We need to ask ourselves what it it that we really need? What is enough? This is, of course, a gigantic issue and there are no easy answers. Let us look, however, at a simple issue to try frame this shift in consciousness.
Boots. Boots are an easy topic. Not very controversial. Unless you live in the tropics or the desert, everyone needs a good pair of boots. The boots should keep you warm and dry and be relatively comfortable. If you were to take an opinion poll I bet that the vast majority would say that they want a pair of boots that will last a long time. So why do so many US Americans buy boots that either don’t keep them warm or don’t keep them dry or don’t last very long? Advertising, commercialism, consumerism? Stupidity? I would argue that it’s a mixture. Intelligence plays a role. I you’re smart enough you don’t get sucked into a consumer trip that is damaging to yourself. In certain environments, though, it’s hard for anyone to avoid the appeal of consumerism and marketing.
Certainly if you take a typical consumer and let him choose between two pairs of boots and provide him with sufficient information, you will find her making a reasonable decision. Boot pair A is 20% cheaper, is warm but doesn’t repel water effectively and has been know to not last more that a couple years. Boot pair B is not as pretty, doesn’t have a brand name, is more durable but more expensive. Pair B is known to last for over ten years. Take away the commercials, take away peer pressure (no teenagers allowed in this experience) and I bet our consumer will make a reasonable decision.

March 8, 2009

Inequality in our Times

Ronald Reagan asked the American public in the 1980 presidential campaign “Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?”. I remember how my high school wood shop teacher responded. He said he did not feel better off that 4 years prior and that that spelled big trouble for Jimmy Carter. At that time the country was suffering from hyperinflation and the oil crisis was fresh on people’s minds.
Reagan perhaps won the election because of the economy and his well-formed question served to remind people of their woes. The question is certainly appropriate in a presidential campaign. People’s perceptions of the economy and how they’re doing financially clearly affect their election preferences. Bill Clinton, not always as eloquent as Reagan but also a good talker, said bluntly “It’s the economy, stupid”. There’s also no doubt that Obama’s landslide victory in 2008 was aided by a faltering economy. Some even say he wouldn’t have been elected if it weren’t for the economic crisis. I’m not sure, though, if such comments came from the same folks who said he wouldn’t have been elected if it weren’t for Palin or if the weather had been better on that Tuesday afternoon.
There is one thing, though, that I would change about Reagan’s question. I’d add a zero to the four. “Are you better off than your parents were a generation ago?”, I would ask. I would have to give Paul Krugman credit for the question. In his book “The Conscience of a Liberal” he deals extensively with this question. Why has inequality risen in the US since the end of the post WWII economic boom? Why has the middle class shrunk so drastically?
I will skip the part of the debate asking whether inequality has risen in the US in the past few decades. Krugman goes to lengths about this and for me it’s so obvious. I moved to Germany twenty years ago and have seen from the outside how poverty has risen, job security has sunken and sending a kid to college has become, for many, impossible. The US society in general has become more unequal. The strong, vital middle class that expanded from the 40‘s to the 80’s has gone to pot, as the British like to say.
Total equality in a society is probably unattainable and, perhaps, undesirable. Egalitarianism in a large, modern country was propagated in Soviet-socialist states like the GDR. Officials and supporters of such a system wanted others to believe that theirs was a classless society. However, the ruling party, the SED, with all it’s members and cohorts was so large that it must clearly be seen as a class in itself.
I sense a tendency among conservatives in the US to go so far as to argue that egalitarianism is utopian and borders on totalitarianism (ie. Soviet Union, China, etc.) Therefore, they say, we don’t even need to try to make our society more equal. It’s useless, leads to totalitarianism, would be boring and, most importantly, goes against our “human nature”. The argumentation continues to point out that the government can’t dictate equality. The individual will pull herself up by her bootstraps and morph herself into a successful, middle class citizen. Government needs to stay out of our business and let each person run their lives as they please. This powerful argumentation has become mainstream thought. Luckily, though, we are entering a new age in which the conservative movement is slowly creeping into the dark corner it belongs in.
What are the personal and social ramifications of living in a society with radical differences in income levels? We can take it to a personal level and ask ourselves how we would feel if a colleague is earning twice as much as you are. He does pretty much the same work. Perhaps he was lucky enough to get assigned to a client who brings in way more revenue that your clients. He receives bonuses based on the success of his sales. This doesn’t feel too hot. You get resentful. You see that he is not supporting you much with your projects. Each employee in such a constellation looks first to make sure his sales go up. Cooperation suffers.
The primatologist Frans de Waal looks at social behavior of apes in his book “Our Inner Ape”. He tells about the time he witnessed a group of chimpanzees enjoying the olive leaves they had been fed through the cage. The leaves were a welcomed variation to their normal diet. Day after day they received their leaves and were quite content with them. The chimps even were careful to make sure that all members of the group got their fair share. One day zoo helpers gave a pair of chimps some grapes. From that day on the others, who hadn’t received grapes, refused the olive leaves. They were no longer good enough.
That apes also experience envy is rather eye-opening. What does envy cause among a group of humanoids? If one high school kid comes cruising to school with mag wheels and stainless steel hubs he will create envy among his peers. Soon you will see other boys showing up with pimped up cars. If one house on my block is twice as big as the others and the owners have a swimming pool to top it, certain social dynamics kick in. Perhaps the other neighbors will ban together and scorn the rich family. Perhaps some will do their best to become buddies with the rich guy, hoping some of his wealth will rub off on them. At any rate it does cause some disturbance in the complicated social quilt bonding a community together.
It becomes a question of justice. If everyone in a community is poor then the community comes together in their efforts to overcome their plight. If a few members become disproportionately wealthier than the rest, the “lessers” begin to question the fairness. No one likes to see some fat cats taking off with more than their fair share of the cake. The sense of community begins to break down.
Summing this up, one can say that inequality in a society leads to envy which results in an increased sense of injustice. This further leads to decreasing cooperation and increasing social turmoil. With the risk of oversimplification I conclude that it must be the goal of a society to strive toward more equality. Income disparity in America today has become purely grotesque. Why should a college kid with the, granted, cool idea of creating the social networking site Facebook be able to become a billionaire within a few years? Is he really that much smarter than me? Is he that much more productive than me? Where is the justice in this picture? I’m no fortune teller but I will predict that pretty soon enough of us apes are going to get tired of munching on olive leaves and demand some of those grapes.

March 6, 2009

As time goes by...

Blog Entry year 2008, um I mean 2009. How time flies these days. Can’t seem to get it off my mind how the days and weeks go by so quickly of late. This obsessive attention-paying began early last year when I started up my own start-up. After working full-time for 10 years at a small software company I decided to start my own biz (www.dynamicwebcreations.com) [sorry, web site still not translated to English]. After long deliberations and even longer walks through the winter forest behind my house, I came to the conclusion that I would keep my old job and start a new company at the same time. By boss wasn’t too crazy about this because I was the only project manager left in the company after a recent process of voluntary and in-voluntary downsizing. There wasn’t much stopping me at that point and so I’ve been working at home a few hours a week trying to get my little firm up and going and at the same time working my buns off for Welsch & Partner.
It’s not the work load or extra stress that I’ve been mostly bugged by. Rather it’s gotten annoying how I keep noticing how Thursday has arrived before Monday is even done with. Recently a friend said that I should try to do “new” or “different” things each day to prevent this time racing thing. That reminds me of the advice another friend gave me at least 15 years ago. He had just finished his training in speech therapy so probably got the idea from some seminar. “Try to do things in an opposite fashion than usual”, he said to me in German. I think it sounded more profound in the original voice. After 15 years I haven’t forgotten so it must have been important. He said if you always tear the toilet paper off the roll with your right hand, try it with your left. If you always put your left leg in your pants first, try putting your right leg in first. I must admit, unfortunately, that I didn’t even follow his advice back then. Perhaps that’s my problem. The second friend’s advice, however, did influence my behavioral patterns; at least a few times. I’m not sure if it helps, but I would say it’s worth a try.
Walking through the woods on a snowy morning, listing to Bob McChesney on WILL-FM radio interviewing Naomi Klein, running up and down the court in a heating soccer match trying to make the perfect pass or shoot the perfect goal, discussing ethics and morality with my 18-year old - those are all things that, I do believe, I enjoy and help prevent time from racing away from me. Perhaps it’s simply an attitude thing. If I wouldn’t get so hung up on the fact that the weeks go by so quickly, they probably wouldn’t. My wife Susa says, “Great, the week is already over. Then the weekend is here and we can take a trip somewhere.” She does sense that days go by quickly but it doesn’t seem to bother her a bit.
I guess it’s also the feeling that my life is just passing by too quickly and before I know it I’ll be this 80 year old fart telling my grandchildren to enjoy life before it passes you by. That’s exactly what my grandmother told me. She was anything but an old fart I must say. She was a gentle, kind, loving women who outlived her husband by a few years and was lucky enough to have my mother nearby to visit her every day. We grandkids, my father and my mother’s sister also visited her regularly. Her deep, clear voice, still slightly tainted by 60 year old Polish roots, would repeat the same handful of anecdotes at the end of our short visits. “Take advantage of each day”, she said, “for life is so short. Enjoy while you are still young.” She was always either standing or sitting at her desk chair, as if sitting in one the soft-cushioned sofa or recliner chairs would cause her short, thin body to sink into oblivion. She had beautiful thick, gray hair, collected in gentle curls. I think she had the same hairdo all the years I knew her. One of the outstanding events in her routine was going with my mother to a particular hairdresser in neighborhood shopping center. Damned if I can’t remember the name of the woman who did her hair.
Those simple few words of hers about enjoying life are buzzing around my head today. Here I am half way through my life. Back then I was at the beginning of my life, she was at the end of hers. What significance did her words have for her? She had lived so long and seen so much. As with many elderly people, she was suffering from a mild sort of dementia with which childhood memories become very pronounced and memories of recent years become weaker. She spoke often of her childhood. A memory made all the more pronounced because of the tragedy and pain she must have gone through. She was born in Poland and emigrated to America at the age of 19 with her mother and two sisters. The father stayed in Poland.
I know little of her childhood aside from the few stories she repeatedly told us. I wonder now why she always repeated the same three or four stories and never told us much more about her past. Perhaps because we didn’t ask. Looking at my own experience I can imagine how pronounced those memories must have been. I, too, emigrated to a foreign country at the age of 19. Amazing, this correlation just struck me while writing this. My emigration was, of course, very different from hers. I left modern, freeway-infatuated California and moved to autobahn-infatuated German. I had a German girlfriend to guide me. My grandmother moved from war-torn Poland to Motor City, Michigan. Her life in America saw the country move from the Great Depression to the Great Compression and on to the Great Society. She witnessed the historic rise of an affluent middle-class America and she and her family were the right archetype rising immigrants. The fact that they were Catholic may have dampened their rise. Along with their language, she, her mother and sisters partially gave up their religion to become real Americans. I remember her telling me (before her dementia), that as a young family in Detroit their greatest dream was to become Americans.
How funny. How different. While I too left my homeland at the age of 19, I did not take my family with me. They all stayed there. My umbilical cord to home was not as strongly severed as that of my grandmothers. I didn’t even “emigrate” to Germany back then. I just was going to do a year abroad, see Europe and have fun with my girlfriend. As things often go, girlfriends that stay girlfriends tend to become more than just girlfriends. Before I knew it she wasn’t just a lover, she was a lover with some individual being growing inside of her.
My emigration was more of prolonged visit for the first years. Although I’ve never done it before (perhaps I could try some day), emigrating to America must be very different than emigrating to Germany. Here (I’m in Deutschland) becoming “German” is next to impossible for immigrants. I, actually, don’t even want to become one. I don’t know why but I still, after 20 years in this country, I still consider myself American. I have a German wife, three German kids, two of which have German and American passports. I am happy here and want to stay here but the integration is different. My grandmother wanted from day one to become a true American and she succeeded in that.
What does this all have to do with my present issue of time perception. I dunno. I just read in the paper that the US is sending telescope into orbit called “Keppler” (a German scientist by the way). They hope to find life on another planet. Maybe one of those German scientists (a bit of pride in German’s history even flows through me) has my answer. It was, I believe, Einstein (yes, he was German, in fact a Swabian born in the same town my wife was) who figured if you you traveled far enough into outer space and then came back to Earth you would be somewhat younger than your twin brother. I don’t know, however, if he also realized you’ld be dead because the human body can’t put up with all the cosmic radiation out there. Hm, guess I’ll just have to go with my grandma’s advice and try to enjoy each and every day.
ciao,
Gus