We didn't start the fire | It was always burning

"World alarmed by violence in US," AP reports.  It should be alarmed.

The violence is really a moral struggle.  It has been clear for a long time that "all men are equal" does not always apply to African-Americans--men, in particular.

As I noted in one of my final columns for the newspaper, back in 2018, "The echoes of slavery and racism were heard loud and clear across the continent, even here in Eugene!"  Racism began with the near annihilation of Native Americans, and has continued on with white supremacy regularly raising its ugly head and finding newer targets.   

African-American men continues to be white supremacy's most favored target :(

The following is from my post in 2018--the post that later became a newspaper op-ed.

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The annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, which was held in New Orleans in early April, was an opportunity to further my understanding of slavery. Despite my intellectual explorations into understanding slavery and its continuing impacts on life in America, I, like many, have a tough time wrapping my head around the notion that human beings were bought and sold over many decades, and treated worse than animals. In this venture, The Big Easy, as New Orleans is referred to, was far from being easy.

After the United States banned transatlantic slave trading in 1808, the domestic trading and forcible relocation of human beings became even more important for the Deep South, whose cotton and sugarcane economy depended on slave labor. As in Solomon Northup's story, which was brought to life in the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave,” even free men were kidnapped from the north and brought to the plantations in the South.

Northup was one of the more than 100,000 humans who were bought and sold in New Orleans, including in the French Quarter, which is now one of the well-recognized tourist spots for food and music. While most of the city, including the French Quarter, even now lacks public memorialization of this dark past, there is at least one plaque—at the intersection of Esplanade and Chartres—that reminds us about the very spot where Northup was sold.

We as a country have never truly come to terms with the true horrors of the buying and selling of human beings and the atrocious treatment of slaves and, therefore, the racial dimensions of contemporary America. Perhaps that is also why we do not have a national museum dedicated to slavery, even though we have national museums devoted to many other aspects of American life.

Thanks to the personal commitment and financial backing from a New Orleans attorney— John Cummings—the Whitney Plantation, located about 30 miles outside New Orleans, is now a museum that is focused on slavery and the lives and deaths of slaves. The plantation was started in 1752, and later became one of the most profitable sugar manufacturers and exporters, with the slave labor working in sub-human conditions in the fields. Visiting the museum, which was opened to the public in 2015, was a painful reminder of the violence and brutality of the institution of slavery.

In this context, a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) should worry us all. The report notes that our schools are not dealing with the “hard history” of slavery. In its research, the SPLC found that “high school seniors struggle on even the most basic questions.” It is always tempting, of course, to speed through the awful past and to spend more time on heroes and heroic moments. But, who we are today is not disconnected from the ugliness of the past.

Here in Eugene and in Oregon, we are no exception. Behind the reputation of Oregon as a deep-blue progressive state lies the undeniable fact that not too long ago it was a crime for blacks to be merely present here. Far removed from the Deep South, and yet Oregon along with Indiana had the highest per-capita membership of its population in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

A couple of years ago, I went to the Mims House in downtown Eugene, after reading about it in this newspaper. When CB and Annie Mims came to Eugene seventy years ago, they could not find housing within the city because black families were not allowed to live within the “whites only” city limits. Eventually, the Mims were able to buy property on the “other side” of the river.

Now a monument of historical importance, the Mims House provided safe boarding and lodging to blacks who were denied services in town. The long list of notables who stayed there includes Louis Armstrong, who was born and raised in New Orleans. The Mims House was the only place where people like Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald could stay when they came here to perform. The echoes of slavery and racism were heard loud and clear across the continent, even here in Eugene!

As the SPLC notes, teaching and learning about slavery “requires often-difficult conversations about race and a deep understanding of American history. Learning about slavery is essential if we are ever to come to grips with the racial differences that continue to divide our nation.” This is a difficult conversation that all of us ought to be engaged in, whether it is in the Big Easy or in Eugene.

When thugs go looting

There is a reason that tRump wrote THUGS in his tweet that was so violent that Twitter had to hide it from people!

I, as one from India, am intimately familiar with the word thug.  The colonial bastards got that word from the Subcontinent and exported it all over the English speaking world.

But, when tRump used that word, he was not referring to any anti-social people.  Nope, the evil man chooses words that he knows will cause immense harm to "others" but will inject enthusiasm into his base.  

What is so harmful about the word thug?

To answer that question, here is a simple and straightforward counter-question.  Have you ever come across white-American no-gooders being described as thugs?  There's your answer, which I blogged about in May 2015--Thug is the new N-word:

Well, the truth is that thug today is a nominally polite way of using the N-word. Many people suspect it, and they are correct. When somebody talks about thugs ruining a place, it is almost impossible today that they are referring to somebody with blond hair. It is a sly way of saying there go those black people ruining things again. And so anybody who wonders whether thug is becoming the new N-word doesn't need to. It's most certainly is.

Looting is what the bastards did in the colonies.  Read, for instance, the following quote that I had used in this post about how tRump's shitholes were systematically created so:

Consider India. At the beginning of eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was 23 percent, as large as all of Europe put together. By the time Britain left India, it had dropped to less than 4 percent. “The reason was simple,” argues Shashi Tharoor in his book Inglorious Empire. “India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for two hundred years was financed by its depredations in India.” Britain, Tharoor argues, deliberately deindustrialized India, both through the physical destruction of workshops and machinery and the use of tariffs to promote British manufacture and strangle Indian industries.

Now, those bastards are honorable men!

This review essay adds fuel to my fires within:

Through adroit use of its well-trained, disciplined armies, over the course of the eighteenth century the company expanded its influence inland from the three littoral “Presidencies” of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. By the 1750s, William Dalrymple tells us in The Anarchy, his new account of the rise of the company, it accounted for almost an eighth of Britain’s total imports of £8 million and contributed nearly a third of a million pounds to the home exchequer in annual customs duties.

The British bandits got away with quite a loot!

 

The American Spring. A Black Revolution.

Not too long ago, a black man decided that kneeling when the national anthem was being sung would be his way to protest against the atrocious treatment of blacks.  "Get that son of a bitch off the field."

A black man is shot dead when he was jogging.  Shot by white men, who are not charged for a couple of months until a video of the cold-blooded shooting surfaces.

A large group of white men armed to the max, on par with military soldiers in most parts of the world, storm into the capitol building, which makes legislators feel threatened.  They were "very good people."

A young white woman calls the cops and reports that an African-American man is threatening her, when all he did was to remind her that the park rules required that dogs be leashed.

A black man is held on the ground by a white police officer, who continues to hold him down even as bystanders shout that the black man is gasping for breath, and the black man dies.

Minneapolis burns as a result.  "THUGS" should be shot!

🇺🇸 UN Human Rights Chief condemns George Floyd's killing and urges serious action to stop US police killings of unarmed African Americans: "This is the latest in a long line" – @mbachelet.

Read: https://t.co/1uK6yF6fi9#StandUp4HumanRights pic.twitter.com/f9OTMdmdt7

— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) May 28, 2020

You try to peacefully protest and take a knee, and the president of the United States demonizes you and calls you a son of bitch. Hell, you run out of options and the will to do it the “right way.”

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) May 29, 2020

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The following is an excerpt from an email exchange that I had in March 2017 with a tRump voter before I completely broke ties with that person:

Over the years, I have never had problems being friends with people of whatever political persuasions, as long as they did not mean ill to me and to people.  As one who has never been confined to any political party or ideology, I have had no problems at all mixing freely and making friends with Republicans too.

But, trump is different.  

trump's entire political life since Obama's election has been based on hate, racism, bigotry, which over the campaign he amplified and then added to it misogyny and more.  I still cannot believe that his mocking of a disabled journalist alone was not considered awful enough for the party to dump his candidacy.  That was merely one act of utterly beastly, least human-like, display that he continued to boastfully stage all across the rallies and TV shows.

One after another, the GOP faithful adopted this horrible human being as their standard-bearer.  I was hoping against hope that you would step up and denounce trump for the horrible human being, which he made clear to everybody that he was/is.  But, you did not--all the way through to the election day.

After the election, I wondered/wonder if you even voted for this horrible human being to become the president of this wonderful country that I have adopted as mine.

With the events that have been unfolding at warped speeds since Jan 20th, with every passing day, I am convinced even more than before that there is no such thing as a good trump voter.  People who voted for him voted for a racist who promised racist outcomes.

Trump campaigned on state repression of disfavored minorities. He gives every sign that he plans to deliver that repression. This will mean disadvantage, immiseration, and violence for real people, people whose “inner pain and fear” were not reckoned worthy of many-thousand-word magazine feature stories. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this, regardless of what you believe about the groups in question. That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice.

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That person was one of the 63 million who elected tRump to power.  People of "faith" they are are!  Guilty beyond any reasonable doubt!

If everyone does what they love ...

... the economy will collapse tomorrow morning

That is pretty funny, and profound especially when you consider the source: Samantha Who?

Yes, that Christina Applegate sitcom, which has been in the rerun world for years now.

If only everyone does what they love, right?  Well, not those who love whacking others, but doing anything that is constructive and not destructive.

The novel coronavirus is compelling many people to question whether what they used to do--if they no longer have those jobs--or what they do is worth any damn thing.

With the pandemic canceling her opportunities for work, Connolly has been wondering why she never looked for fulfillment elsewhere. Now that work is no longer the defining force of her life, she’s taken to cooking for a local charity, but she’s also asking bigger, existential questions: “What are my hobbies? What makes me happy? What are my interests outside of my job now that I don’t have it anymore?” 

Long time readers of this blog, including the awful tRump and mOdi toadies who even used to post comments here, know all too well that I have been blogging about these forever.  It is awful that it has taken the COVID-19 tragedy for people to question what was previously taken for granted.

It is not often in life we are in situations when work is hobby and hobby is work and we love what we do. It is extremely rare.

More often than not, people end up doing whatever they can in order to earn their paychecks, and then drive around with "I would rather be fishing" bumper stickers.  "For the sake of the stomach, many acts do we put on" is how an old Sanskrit translates to in English.

As I have noted many times in the past, most of what we do are bullshit jobs.  The anthropologist who gave me/us that phrase, David Graeber, has more to offer in the age of the coronavirus:

The coronavirus, and resulting lockdowns, is teaching us an even more startling lesson: that a very large portion of what we call “the economy” is little more than just another scam.

It's hard to know what else to conclude when literally millions of highly paid office workers have been forced to stay away from the office, to reduce their work to 10 or 15 minutes a day, or often nothing at all, without having the slightest impact on those essential functions that keep the public fed, clothed, distracted and alive

He notes there:

Let’s perform a thought experiment. What if we conceived “the economy” not as a market but as the way we human beings take care of one another, by providing each other with material needs and the basis for satisfying, meaningful lives.

Here is to hoping that in the post-pandemic world a lot more people would get to do what they love.

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh

Click here to listen to the poem read aloud; listening to poems is how I learnt to enjoy poetry.

The Trees, by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Sesame oil at English Road

I was reading this essay when a paragraph arrested my progress:

Like Colley in The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, Lockwood uses individual life stories to tell his global history. Many of them are familiar to historians of the period, but he has assembled a remarkably diverse collection and writes about them vividly. Dean Mahomet, one of his examples, was a Bengali who served in the army of Britain’s East India Company during its wars against the Maratha Confederacy. In 1784, at age twenty-five, he accompanied his Irish commanding officer back to Europe and later opened London’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House. It failed, but Mahomet bounced back, starting a series of profitable, South Asian–themed bathhouses that featured the newly fashionable Indian hair and body massage called “shampoo.” He eventually became the official “shampooing surgeon” to two British kings and lived into his nineties.

As the 18th century was winding down, a Bengali moved to London and started "South Asian–themed bathhouses that featured the newly fashionable Indian hair and body massage called “shampoo.”  Wouldn't you also stop and marvel at this history?

I remembered that "shampoo" is also a word that owes its origin to the Subcontinent.  Wikipedia helps me out with the details:

The word shampoo entered the English language from the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era.^[1] It dates to 1762 and is derived from Hindi chāmpo (चाँपो [tʃãːpoː]),^[2][3] itself derived from the Sanskrit root chapati (चपति), which means to press, knead, soothe

Wait, what?  Shampoo and Chapati go back to the same word origin?  I suppose kneading the dough to make the tasty chapati is similar to massaging the head ;)  Who woulda thunk that!

We didn't use any industrial product called a shampoo for a long time.  I think it was every weekend  (Sunday?), or was it one weekend a month, that we had the "oil bath."  Sesame oil (I think) was gently warmed up with a couple of peppercorns.  We then rubbed the warm oil all over and let the skin soak it all up for maybe a half an hour, some of which was spent under the sun sitting on the washing stone in the backyard.

Now, as I think about all that, I value the wonderful practice to maintain a healthy skin.  And the exposure to the sun for the way too important vitamin-D.

Washing the oil off involved no soap, but shikakai powder.  The powder was not smooth; in today's language, they were exfoliating scrubs too.

But then we children fell victim to the advertising blitzkrieg that promoted shampoos and soaps.  Those were used by "modern" people, and we English-medium school kids demanded that we be modern. 

I didn't care when grandma said that the shampoo made our hair look and feel like coconut coir.

A couple of years ago, when visiting with my parents, I decided that I would have an oil bath for old time sake.  I didn't know which container in my mother's kitchen had the oil that I needed. 

"Which oil I should use, amma?" I yelled from the kitchen so that my mother would hear me in the bedroom where she was recovering from her fracture.

My father, who always likes to be involved in any conversation, was literally in the middle--in the living room between the kitchen and the bedroom.  "No, Sriram, you will end up with a fever when you have not had an oil bath for decades," he declared.

I could not see the logic of it all.  Neither did I want to hear the dreaded "I told you so!" if I fell sick for whatever reason.

Those childhood Sundays of oil bath and poondu-rasam seem a lot simpler and attractive a life, especially on this Sunday in the age of the coronavirus.

Winning is not the only thing

tRump is on record over and over again on how he does not like losers and chokers.  It does not matter to him that his definition of losers included a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was tortured as a prisoner-of-war!

Winning is all that matters to him.

On the other side, there are people like me.  It is not really about the winning or losing, but is about playing by the rules.  In fact, it is about making sure that the rules are fair in the first place.

Fair play has always been important to me and that carries over to every aspect of my life--whether it is at work or with family and friends.  To such an extent that I walk away from people--colleagues and family alike--when they sharply deviate from fair play.  Thus, gone from my life are tRump worshipers and mOdi supporters.

Right from my young days, I didn't like rough and unsportsman-like attitudes that were driven by a goal to win at any cost.  Winning mattered, yes, but the road to the win was way more important.  One of my favorite memories in cricket is of GR Viswanath recalling the opposing side's batsman after the umpire had ruled him out.  A decency that tRump and his 63 million toadies can never imagine even in their wildest dreams.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are far too many people on this planet to whom winning is the only thing. I am convinced that such an approach to life will never create harmonious coexistence on this planet.  This winning is the only thing will end up in a collective loss for humanity.

I do not understand the urge to win at all cost, despite the affluence, the prosperity, the plenitude. 

I have been worried about all these worsening trends for a long, long time.  The following is a column of mine that was published 12 years ago, almost to the date: May 27, 2008.  

I remain convinced that nice guys never finish last, but are winners all the time.

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Published in The Register-Guard, May 27, 2008

Flicking through the television channels the other day, I paused at a basketball playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz, which was such a close one that it eventually was settled in overtime.

The commentator made interesting remarks that are quite the norm in such contexts, analyzing who was in foul trouble and how many fouls each team had “left to give.”

Fouls left to give? There is no more talk of sports promoting sportsmanship, camaraderie and cooperation. Instead, it is about “fouls left to give” until players are ejected.

Increasingly, fouls and penalties are no longer results of players’ accidents or mistakes. Coaches and players systematically exploit this as a loophole with the sole intention of restricting the opponent’s performance.

It is not uncommon to see a basketball player intentionally grabbing an opposing team’s player if that will prevent a sure two points.

It is so often used against Shaquille O’Neal that we now have the sports jargon, “hack-a-Shaq.” A football cornerback might commit pass interference if it appears that without that penalty the wide receiver might coast into the end zone for a touchdown.

The manner in which fans respond to these fouls indicates that they, too, see it as legitimate maneuvering.

I wonder, then, if involvement in athletics might end up doing more harm than good. What will children learn if their coach teaches them to grab the player in order to prevent an opponent from scoring? Is the lesson to focus on winning at any cost, fully understanding that they have “fouls to give”?

It is bizarre that we have zero-tolerance policies in educational settings, even as we could instruct the same children that they have “fouls to give” on the playground.

It is no stretch to argue that this notion of “fouls to give” is becoming common in society.

The havoc that Enron brought upon its employees, shareholders and the rest of the world was nothing but a reflection of its decision-makers’ thinking that their transgressions were within their “fouls to give.” Professionals advise corporations on how to exploit loopholes in the law — a variation of fouls to give.

Political campaigning is along the same lines: Candidates or their surrogates intentionally commit fouls, then pay appropriate penalties and carry on, because, hey, that is how the game is played.

As an academic concerned about more than mere curricular issues, I am always perturbed when students and colleagues commit fouls. You can, therefore, imagine my sheer delight with the recent softball incident in a game between Central Washington University and Western Oregon University, where I teach.

In case you missed that news item: A lot was at stake because the winner of that game qualified for the regionals. With two on base, at the plate was a diminutive graduating Western senior who had never homered in her life. She hit her first home run ever, then badly injured her knee at first base while making her way around the bases.

Two fielders from Central carried her around the bases, which counted as a home run for Western. The gregarious Central team went on to the lose the game, while Western moved on to the regionals, and won the first round there, too.

It was a remarkable story of sportsmanship and offered an absolute contrast to the “fouls to give” calculations that are otherwise the norm.

In the spirit of using athletics to forge a greater sense of humanity, imagine the following scenario, which might sound as if it is coming from another planet. Well, given that I am from India, it might well be an alien thought!

The next academic year, when the Oregon Ducks play hosts to Pac-10 football teams at the loud and boisterous Autzen Stadium, it will almost always be a midday or late afternoon game. That means that there will be ample time for the Ducks to play a different type of host again: to sit down with the visiting team and have dinner after the game. The bands from the host and visiting teams can play a few numbers as entertainment for the evening.

An outrageous idea, I realize. But what a powerful message it can convey, particularly to the youth! The university even can make a fundraiser out of this, splitting the proceeds with the visiting teams.

It would be a huge step in the right direction. The focus, after all, is on the common cause of developing one’s skills and learning and playing the game to one’s fullest. I can easily imagine that such an attitude will quickly lead to players and spectators alike relearning the forgotten idea that there is no place for “fouls to give.”

In my book, nice guys never finish last, but are winners all the time.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

In graduate school, I read Isiah Berlin's essay about liberty.  Here's the crux of it:

As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.

According to those of us who are to the left of the political center, we need an active state that would watch out for the under-privileged who do not have the same opportunities to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that the privileged few take for granted.  This is why we support public education, for instance.

During this global pandemic, we are also the people who look to the state for a coordinated response that would address public health.  Thus, we support the government when it requires us to practice social distancing.  If the government says that wearing masks when in closed public spaces, we do it even if it fogs up our glasses, dammit! And when our fellow citizens suffer from loss of jobs and more, we want our government to help them and for which we are also willing to pay our share.

Our version of freedom differs from the twisted understanding of freedom that is championed by those on the other side of the political center.  Especially those who are far, far away on the extreme side.

This difference in the interpretation of freedom shows up in how we respond to "essential workers."  We people on the left side are the ones who demand that people doing the essential services--teachers, grocery store workers, agriculture labor, food industry workers, ...--ought to be paid more.  As this essay points out, “Essential” turns out to be not an honorific but an obligation."

What is "essential"?  Turns out that like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.  Even baklavas can be essential!

Our differing understanding of freedom shows up in public policy:

In short, the question is now squarely put whether the full force and power of the state will be deployed behind those who can wield the economic compulsion of threatening to fire you if you won’t work in a life-threatening workplace, or whether our laws and government will stand with those who are the objects of such compulsion.

Do those essential workers have the freedom that we think they have?

Ultimately, the point of reopening is not to free voluntary workers but to place more into the category of “mandatory worker”: If your workplace is now reopened, you must return to it, or lose your job. Sure, plenty of people are dying to get back to work–once the reopeners have their way, however, many more will be dying from getting back to work. But—and here’s where the real issue of “freedom” comes in—they will have no real choice.

In November, we will decide, once again, which interpretation of freedom that the country prefers.

The chicks are full of life

We are well into spring.  It is a once again green, green land. 

The goslings that came into being only a couple of weeks ago have grown up fast.  The ducklings are tiny and follow their mothers, sometimes at dizzying speeds for their size.

Life goes on, even as our human lives are threatened by an invisible pathogen.

It is also the sight of such life, against the lush green of spring, that soothes, consoles, and encourages the heart.

The following is a slightly edited post from May 20, 2012:

*************************************

It doesn't surprise us in Eugene that clouds have started rolling in as if to make fun of our plans and desires.  But, clouds or no clouds, it was too good a spring day not to walk by the river and take in the sights.

And, what sights they were!

I had barely walked five minutes on the path by the river when I spotted a huge gathering of geese and goslings.

The last time this happened, I was so mesmerized by the sight that it didn't occur to me to take photos until it was way too late.

"Not making the same mistake today," I told myself as I immediately reached out for my camera.

I stood there watching the birds for a while. 

I continued walking.  

And more chicks. 

The mother goose (technically, a goose can only be a mother, when the male is a gander, right?) looked up at me as if waiting for food to drop down.

Perhaps the birds have come to treat humans as food providers because quite a few continue to feed the birds despite signs advising people not to do that.  If only humans would learn--story of our lives!

When the birds realized that I wasn't going to give them anything to eat, perhaps they were disappointed like how some students get when they realize that I never cancel classes :)

So, they took off and almost right away fell into a straight line formation.

No more chicks to admire, and I resumed walking.

The grass seed pollen levels were certainly getting to the unhealthy side--my eyes were beginning to water, and my nose and throat were getting itchy.  But then I kept going--allergy be damned--there are goslings and ducklings waiting for me!

The Ebola lessons

Consider the following sentences:

 “Rwanda, in their first month, went from two cases to a hundred and thirty-four,” Joia Mukherjee, the chief medical officer for Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that works in ten countries, said. “Belgium, which is the same size—twelve million people—and is the former colonizer of Rwanda, grew from two cases to seventy-four hundred.”

Re-read those lines again, because you might have misread it because of your bias.  A bias that associates Rwanda with genocide and everything negative, and Belgium with chocolates and all things good!

Rwanda did much better than its old colonizer, Belgium!  Hey, the entire sub-Saharan Africa is doing much better.

"If the virus had followed the same trajectory there that it has in the West, most African countries would have seen explosive transmission rates by now."  Yet, they do not.

Perhaps sub-Saharan African countries don't have enough tests?  After all, they are shitholes, according to the stable genius!

The most obvious question, to people from countries still lacking a true picture of their disease burdens, is whether Africa has enough tests. (The short answer is, often, yes.)

We work with the cliched stereotypes of the 'country' of Africa and, therefore, perhaps do not think about the obvious reason for why those countries might be doing better job of  managing the coronavirus:

“One reason why we may be seeing what we are seeing is that the continent of Africa reacted aggressively,” John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told me. “Countries were shutting down and declaring states of emergency when no or single cases were reported. We have evidence to show that that helped a lot.”

If only Belgium had done what Rwanda did:

Rwandan officials responded to their first coronavirus cases by tracing, isolating, and testing “contacts,” people whom confirmed or suspected carriers might have encountered before realizing they were, in fact, covid-19 patients. Five days after the first cases were confirmed, commercial flights were halted, and two days later, the country was locked down, both to limit the spread of the disease and to ease the tedious work of contact tracing. By the end of April, health workers had tested more than twenty thousand people and conducted two random community surveys, a method for guarding against the bias of testing too narrowly, which might artificially deflate case figures. “We did not find any community transmission of covid-19 in Rwanda, which was quite good news for us,” Sabin Nsanzimana, an epidemiologist who heads the Rwanda Biomedical Center, which also houses the national reference laboratory that processes covid-19 tests, said. “So far, we are at the phase of containing the epidemic in Rwanda, which means that we know who has the disease.”

Unlike the tRump administration that threw out the pandemic plan that the Obama administration had developed post-Ebola scare, the African countries did not forget the lessons from the Ebola outbreak:

The East African countries that are, so far, outperforming the global West benefitted from Ebola preparations as well. Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Uganda all border the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and were forced to respond to its Ebola outbreak in 2018. Each country already has rapid-response teams, trained contact tracers, logistics routes, and other public-health tools and protocols in place, which they have adapted to respond to the coronavirus. That level of cöordination—indeed, of practice—also makes a difference.

How fantastic!

The irony, of course, is that some of the nations that are most burdened by covid-19 taught their African counterparts how to do that work. The U.S. C.D.C. sent disease-surveillance experts to West Africa to train local health workers during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. When the coronavirus struck, the U.S. neglected those same basic public-health protocols.

Humbled we arrogant Americans should be, and 63 million ought to hide out of shame!

Oh, btw, remember these (and more)?

Ebola has been confirmed in N.Y.C., with officials frantically trying to find all of the people and things he had contact with.Obama's fault

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014

There is ZERO margin for error on Ebola. Are we confident in Obama when he can’t even make a website for $5 Billion?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014

The ghost games

The German language has a word for everything!  Today's exhibit: Geisterspiele.

It means ghost games.

Why so?

The soccer games are closed to the public, because of COVID-19.

A sports journalist files his report, and ends it with:

Not everything is going well on this first weekend of the new era. Much is new, a lot unfamiliar, some very strange. And yet we Germans are somehow proud that with our meticulousness we managed to get the ball rolling again.

Yet again, soccer explains the world!

In June 2010, against the backdrop of the World Cup, I wrote in this column: "A sport is, thus, more than merely about the game itself.  It presents yet another opportunity to begin to understand the peoples of the world, and their cultures and politics."

The following is my column from June 13, 2010:

************************************************

While India and China seem to be in the news all the time when it comes to economic matters, their noticeable absence from the World Cup tournament in South Africa might be obvious even to those who are not sports junkies.

With a combined population of about 2.5 billion, China and India account for almost two-fifths of the humans on the planet, and yet their teams did not make it to South Africa.  This is not merely the result of the preliminary rounds that determine the qualifiers for the tournament, but might be a reflection of the respective sociopolitical ethos as well.

When the Olympics were held in Beijing last summer, it was clear that China had morphed into a sports power.  Chinese athletes earned the most gold medals—51—but, the United States beat China in the aggregate medal count by ten.  This rapid rise in Olympics was triggered by the Chinese government’s extensive investment in facilities and athletes themselves.

It also turns out that political decisions to invest in sports mean that there is a lot more attention paid to individual performances—such as gymnastics or diving.  Team sports require a lot more planning and coordination at various levels, and are not amenable to delivering quick results.  Further, a football—er, soccer—team, for instance, is simply more than a mere collection of eleven players on the field, and is a wonderful illustration of the philosophical notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  The net result is that China did not get past the third round of the qualifiers for this World Cup. 

The US offers quite a contrast to the Chinese approach in that there is no formal government investment in sports, including football, and expenses are met primarily through sponsorships and endorsements.  The extensive network of youth soccer programs has been slowly and steadily developing quality players and the US soccer teams are no longer taken for granted.

India has neither the Chinese approach to sports, nor does it have an American style bottom-up grassroots structure.  But, it is not because the Indian population or government is indifferent to sports.  For instance, later this year, in October, India will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and the government spending for it has generated immense controversy. 

Whether it is the Olympics or football, India does not suffer a shortage of television viewership either.  Millions, like my high school friend who lives in Chennai, even re-arrange their schedules in order to keep up with the telecasts from abroad.  But, this passion is not reflected in the results on the field—at the Beijing Olympics, India won one gold and two bronzes for a grand total of three medals. 

Such a situation is not a result of the attention on that other great game—cricket.  After all, teams from countries with significantly lesser population, like Australia or Sri Lanka, often humble the Indian cricket team.  And in field hockey, which is another popular sport in the Subcontinent, teams from the tiny Netherlands routinely rout the Indians.  In soccer, India’s team lost to Lebanon in the first round of the qualifiers.  It turns out that a billion people do not make a sports powerhouse!

A reason that is offered more often than not—even during my childhood years—is that the Indian culture advocates contentment.  Hence, the lack of a “killer instinct” that is needed to push oneself to be a winner in sports. 

As much as it is tempting to buy into this explanation, Sweden offers quite a comparison.  The Swedish folks, after all, have their own word for moderation—“lagom”.  “Lagom” is a way of life that emphasizes individual and social attributes such as enough, sameness, and average.  However, this has not precluded the Swedes from excelling in individual or collective activities. 

A sport is, thus, more than merely about the game itself.  It presents yet another opportunity to begin to understand the peoples of the world, and their cultures and politics.  Yet, if the game of soccer does not grab one’s attention, I suggest the following books as summer readings—“Soccer and Philosophy” and “How Soccer Explains the World.”

Eat more bloody grass

The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty — it's based on selective forgetting. But what we eat — how it's raised and how it gets to us — has consequences that can't be ignored any longer.

If you thought that excerpt was from a recent commentary in the context of COVID-19 infections at meatpacking plants, you are wrong.

That was from 2009!  August 20, 2009.

It never took a proverbial rocket scientist, nor an economist, to understand that food--especially animal protein--being this inexpensive is simply unnatural.  We always knew there were downsides to it, but we chose to ignore them all.  If we don't know about it, well, there is no problem, right?

Wrong.

I noted in another post, in 2013:

Here in the US, we are so easily separated from the messy process of a living animal being converted to the food that we purchase.  An overwhelming majority of the consumers are city slickers who are spared of the details.  A packet of boneless chicken is a product in the grocery store as much broccoli or toilet paper are!

Occasionally, consumers get all riled up, like when news broke that horse meat was found in frozen beef patties and IKEA's meatballs.  Otherwise, people don't seem to pause even for a second to wonder how it is possible for a Taco Bell burrito to cost more than an apple!

The low, low prices were made possible through an unholy combination: Low wages for workers, many of whom were undocumented; animals grown, fattened, and killed in most inhumane ways (as if there could ever be any humane way!); and extensive government subsidies.

COVID-19 is exposing them all.

Michael Pollan writes that "the pandemic is making the case not only for a different food system but for a radically different diet as well."  The food that we eat, industrially processed at so many levels, is literally killing us:

Unfortunately, a diet dominated by such foods (as well as lots of meat and little in the way of vegetables or fruit—the so-called Western diet) predisposes us to obesity and chronic diseases such as hypertension and type-2 diabetes. These “underlying conditions” happen to be among the strongest predictors that an individual infected with Covid-19 will end up in the hospital with a severe case of the disease; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that 49 percent of the people hospitalized for Covid-19 had preexisting hypertension, 48 percent were obese, and 28 percent had diabetes.⁹

But, do not immediately blame consumers for their bad food choices.  Ask yourself, again, how it can be possible for a healthy food like an apple to cost more than an unhealthy food like a Taco Bell burrito.  The affluent are, on an average, healthier than the poor for a number of reasons.

Meanwhile, the low-income have also suddenly become unemployed.  It is an old and unfortunate story all over again!

Source

How productive are you?

That's exactly the question that is not appropriate during this global pandemic.

I have advocated against an obsession with productivity, especially in higher education; but we will merely focus on life during these extraordinary times.

Ever since COVID-19 started ruining our lives, I have been tweeting in favor of a slowdown.  Being alive and healthy is productive enough, I believe.

Like this one on March 30th:

"Understand that this is a marathon. ...
Emotionally prepare for this crisis to continue for 12 to 18 months, followed by a slow recovery."https://t.co/KYqRIHg0em via @chronicle @profaishaahmad

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) March 30, 2020

And this a few days later:

"This is a very stressful time and you shouldn’t be operating on all four cylinders all the time. ...
We just need to pace ourselves.”#Productivity in the time of the #Coronavirushttps://t.co/alCsgxTsjB#COVID19 #MentalHealth

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) April 6, 2020

And more.

Recently, I joked with my mother that people all over the world have adopted her lifestyle--not going out of the house, and not doing much when inside.  She laughed.  Of course, there is a whole another reason for her house arrest over the past couple of years.  But, such is life!

We have brought this productivity curse upon ourselves.  The first mistake was the agricultural revolution.  The industrial revolution was an even bigger mistake.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the dominant philosophy of work has centered around productivity as the only metric that’s important for success. As work culture developed, we’ve internalized the idea that any time that isn’t spent doing something is wasted time. Worse, we’ve been made to believe that if we aren’t struggling and hustling, we don’t deserve our success. And now, our relationship to work has become tied to our sense of self and self-worth.

The relationship that we have developed between work and self-worth is also why when meeting new people, almost the first question is about what we do!  We have even developed modern aphorisms like "work builds character."  What bullshit!

During these coronavirus times, it is all the more important to set aside time for the real self:

It’s important to use some of this time to process our emotions and reflect on the discomfort from all this productivity propaganda. Operating as usual will not only negatively affect your work but could compromise your health.

Even well after the global pandemic eases.

The COVID spell

An event that was canceled for the first time since World War II.

The streak came to an end.

All because of a diktat, complained one author in jest.

That event?

The National Spelling Bee.

While I, an Indian-American have never watched the event, nor have I ever participated in any kind of a spelling competition, I have followed the news about it for one simple reason: Indian-American kids dominate this event.

I wrote about this back in June 2010.  It was a newspaper column, in which I noted:

The linkage between the spelling bee and Indian- Americans started back in 1985 when Balu Natarajan won the event. That “kid” is now Dr. Natarajan.

COVID-19 has taken many such simple pleasures away from kids.

But it was not merely about the Bee that I wrote.  It was but an opportune moment to talk about something more important, like how English is the language in the US and India because of the same colonizer--Britain. 

The following is the column that was published on June 8, 2010:

********************************************************************

(For The Register-Guard, Appeared in print: Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010)

It is almost a non-story anymore when an Indian- American kid wins the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Last Friday, for the third year in a row and the eighth time in the past 12 years, an Indian-American student won it all. This year’s champion, Anamika Veeramani, won after out-dueling another Indian-American, Shantanu Srivatsa.

The linkage between the spelling bee and Indian- Americans started back in 1985 when Balu Natarajan won the event. That “kid” is now Dr. Natarajan, a physician with a specialty in sports medicine, who notes on his Web site that “winning the ‘bee’ was definitely an important experience,” and adds that he is more proud of being a good doctor and the work he does with his patients.

Given Natarajan’s profession, and the career choices of quite of a few other past winners, it is not a surprise that this year’s champion also plans to go into medicine. Anamika wants to be a cardiovascular surgeon.

It is far more intriguing that these champion spellers do not seem to be keen on careers in English literature. It is not that these contestants lack an interest in literature, either — one, who is not even a teenager yet, lists “Gone With the Wind” as a favorite book.

Despite the rather jaded reaction to yet another Indian- American winning the bee, the champion’s first and last names caught my attention. There was a fantastic message in her first name being Anamika, a Sanskrit name that literally translates to “without a name.” Like “anonymous.”

One might wonder then why parents would name a child “anonymous.” Well, it’s because there is a much more profound and philosophical meaning behind that name. “Anamika” means that there are not enough words to describe the value, beauty and importance — the equivalent in English is when we say something like “there are no words to describe it.”

Thus, it is quite a linguistic irony that the Spelling Bee recognizes kids who are talented with words, while this year’s winner has a name that means there aren’t enough words to describe her preciousness!

The champion’s last name, Veeramani, suggested an origin in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India. Tamil Nadu, or the “land of the Tamils,” is where most of India’s Tamil-speaking population is concentrated. A significant minority of neighboring Sri Lanka’s population is also Tamil.

Having been raised a Tamil, with immediate and extended families still living in Tamil Nadu, I naturally was curious about Anamika’s parents. I even checked with my father to find out whether we might know them, and was a tad disappointed at being unable to bridge the degrees of separation. But that’s understandable, given that there are an estimated 75 million Tamils worldwide.

Anamika’s parents’ names turn out to be equally cinematic of sorts. The father’s name is Alagaiya and the mother is Malar. In the Tamil language, “malar,” as a noun, means a flower. The same word also can be used as a verb to mean “to bloom.” The father’s name is derived from a Tamil word for beauty — “Alagu.”

Typically it is only in fictional worlds that someone named “flower” would marry one named “beauty” and then together they would have a child named “anonymous,” who would go on to win a championship that is all about words. Real life, yet again, is more exciting and dramatic than fiction.

The Indian-American dimension of the spelling bee is as much a story of immigration to the United States as it is a reflection of a common heritage of having been British colonies, which is the reason English is the lingua franca. America and India were once a part of the British Empire, where the sun never set.

One particular connection is quite poignant. Lord Cornwallis, who was the governor-general of British India from 1786 to 1793, previously had served the crown as an army officer during the American War of Independence. It is strange that after surrendering to George Washington and returning to England with Benedict Arnold, Cornwallis was rewarded with a powerful and influential posting in India.

To paraphrase Paul Harvey, now you know “the rest of the story” behind the non-story of yet another Indian-American winning the spelling bee.

WHO cares about the rest of the world!

In this post in May 2009--yes, eleven long years ago--I commented that FDR was "a geography teacher-in-chief" for the manner in which he urged Americans to buy maps of the world and then follow along with him details of the World War II battles that he “chatted” about in his radio addresses—with specific references to the geographic areas.

What a mighty fall in 70 years!

We now have a President who couldn't care about the rest of the world. America first, he yells, and his fanatical fans have orgasms on hearing that!

Even during a global pandemic, when no wall can stop a virus, and for which global cooperation is urgently needed even from a purely selfish perspective.  It boggles my mind that this administration did not want to even participate in the global effort, and that the news headline reads, "Countries pledge $8 billion for coronavirus vaccine, but U.S. absent."

I wrote in that post, which later morphed into a newspaper opinion column:

In the contemporary world, too, America is actively engaged in the international arena. To play a constructive role, we citizens need to be informed enough in order to be able to convey to elected leaders the changes we would like to make. A spatial understanding of the world is, therefore, essential to carry out civic responsibilities.

Where we are today is a reflection of my fellow citizens' preferences.  Some day, sooner than later, they too will understand that we are all in this together.

The following is an unedited version of the post from May 2009:

***********************************************************

Could it be true that that only a few, other than real estate agents and geographers, understand the importance of location, location, and location?

I asked the students in one of my classes whether they considered Iraq and Iran as important enough for Americans to know more about. There was no hesitation—students unanimously, and loudly, voiced their affirmatives. The party-pooper that I am, I interrupted their enthusiastic comments by handing out blank outline maps of the Middle East and directed them to identify as many countries as they possibly could. Given how much Iraq has been dominating our lives, I was sure that a majority of the class would at least identify that country. Of course, the blank map included Iran and Afghanistan as well, which are equally newsworthy.

Well, it turns out that the familiarity that the class had about Iraq, Iran, and Saddam Hussein did not lead to a spatial understanding of that part of the world. Class discussions suggested that the actual location of Iraq or Iran did not matter to them. Iraq may as well be on Mars then?

After pointing out the countries, at the end of the exercise, I directed them to look at Sudan and Ethiopia. As they kept staring at the countries on the map, perhaps for the first time in their lives, it became apparent to them that it is a relatively narrow body of water, the Red Sea, which separates these countries from a larger contiguous land area that we refer to as the Middle East. For all purposes, Sudan and Ethiopia are, hence, only a metaphorical stone’s throw away from Saudi Arabia, and yet Ethiopia is imagined as a poor country in a remote part of Africa.

Of course, geography is not about memorizing maps, or random and trivial facts about places. It is about understanding relationships—such as economic or political relationships—between and amongst geographic areas. Such a framework, though, begins with knowing the actual location of a place, and its relationship with its surroundings. After all, if we didn’t know where exactly Ethiopia is, would we really be able to understand why that country seems to have so many problems, and how those spill over to neighboring Eritrea, for instance?

The fantastic and fortunate contrast to the disinterest in understanding locations is this: we live in a world in which information is freely and easily accessible. News media often include maps of countries in their reports. A simple Google search brings up detailed maps of practically any area of the world. This ease of obtaining information is all the more the reason educators like me want our students, and the general populace, to understand and appreciate the world.

Information was not so readily available sixty years ago. Which is why I find it simply remarkable how President Franklin Roosevelt emphasized the spatial understanding of the world, when the country was in the midst of one of the bloodiest wars. The author and public intellectual, Susan Jacoby, noted an interesting aspect of Roosevelt’s “fireside chats”—he urged Americans to buy maps of the world and then follow along with him details of the World War II battles that he “chatted” about in his radio addresses—with specific references to the geographic areas.

Roosevelt may have had in mind what a student in my class articulated in her assignment after the class exercise. She wrote: “One thing that stood out to me this week was …. I find that I get so caught up in these abstract, revolutionary concepts of how the world should be better without ever even taking into account what the world actually looks like.”

By urging Americans to look at the maps of the theatres of war, Roosevelt was making sure that his fellow citizens knew what the world looked like, even as America was playing a crucial role in reshaping it. I guess Roosevelt was a geography teacher-in-chief, while he was successfully carrying out his responsibilities as the commander-in-chief.

In the contemporary world, too, America is actively engaged in the international arena. To play a constructive role, we citizens need to be informed enough in order to be able to convey to elected leaders the changes we would like to make. A spatial understanding of the world is, therefore, essential to carry out civic responsibilities. Add a world atlas to your summer reading list.

It is Commencement ... of what?

Other than "congratulations," what can I possibly wish a student graduating from college this spring?

The world is certainly not their oyster at this time.  "The future is yours" is a cheap lie.  Instead of a commencement of all things wonderful, it seems more like a commencement of miseries :(

At least I am in the twilight of a mediocre career; their careers--illustrious or boring or mediocre--is yet to begin!

The worry that I have this time far exceeds the concerns that I expressed during the Great Recession.  In May 2010, when we were still clawing our way up from the depths of the recession, I thought that the crisis might be a great opportunity to reform and rethink higher education itself.

I wrote then: "Job prospects for graduates are bleak.  I am willing to bet that this is not what students had imagined will be the case, as they worked through the four to six years of college."

In ended that post with wishful thinking: "Perhaps we could use the context of graduation “commencements” and commence a sincere, serious, and systematic revolution in education here in Oregon."

Of course, that higher education revolution did not happen! 

This time, it is likely that up to a fifth of the higher education institutions might go bankrupt, and we might never hear from them again.  My job, too, could be gone.  Life in the time of the coronavirus!

The following is an unedited version of the post from May 2018:

*****************************************************

Given the grim economic conditions everywhere, I do not know whether to congratulate the students who are graduating, or to commiserate with them.

The American economy had barely come out of a recession when I completed my PhD.  But, that recession in the early 1990s was nothing compared to this Great Recession.  I did manage to find a job, and then lucked out by coming back to academia, which I truly enjoy as a calling, starting in California and then on to Oregon.

But, unemployment as a result of this Great Recession continues to remain high, and analysts forecast that it could hover at between 8.5 and 9 percent nationwide even at the end of 2011!

Studies also point out that when careers begin at such unfavorable economic conditions, earnings tend to be low—at the starting point as well as throughout the career. 

Job prospects for graduates are bleak.  I am willing to bet that this is not what students had imagined will be the case, as they worked through the four to six years of college.  One of my students, who is completing the undergraduate program in four years, masked her concerns in a rather humorous manner when she said that she cannot go back to living with her parents because of the attention that she will receive as the only child.  A sense of humor certainly helps! 

On the other side, when we look at the employment data, it does seem like we have inflated the academic credential requirements for jobs where that high level of investment in education might not be required at all.  One of the often cited examples is the data that fifteen percent of the mail carriers are college graduates.

By encouraging, nudging, and even forcing youth to head to college, we find ourselves in a situation where there is no comparable taxpayer expenditure on higher education.  In fact, with budget deficits over the next couple of biennia, further reductions in government support for higher education are guaranteed.  This then will further compel state-assisted institutions to increase tuition and fees, which in turn will force students to borrow loans.  At the end of it all, even now, a typical graduate exits with a diploma, about 20,000 dollars of debt, and no job. 

Meanwhile, we taxpayers expect and require colleges to demonstrate, with appropriate measures of efficiencies and effectiveness, increases in utilization of their capacities, while learning itself gets pushed to the side.  A factory system then serves as the model for education, when, ironically, the country has been rapidly shedding factories from its economic structure.

All these strengthen my worries that we are setting up a system that is bound to fail, or is already failing.

Volatire remarked that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, and nor an empire.  Well, higher education is increasingly neither higher nor education.  Perhaps we could use the context of graduation “commencements” and commence a sincere, serious, and systematic revolution in education here in Oregon.

Oh stop, my heartbeats, for I have found my destination

(Lyrics translation and more here)

The original ... from 1962




And the re-imagined one ... from 2020: