Potpourri

Yell me a yeller ribbon

Spent Christmas with my newborn grandson in Southgate, Michigan on the outskirts of Detroit. When I was not getting pee’d and burped upon, I froze my heinie (rhymes with Jaime) at the neighborhood Holiday Inn, catching up on print and broadcast news. We did have snow on Christmas Day but nothing remained white in sooty Motor City. One look at downtown Detroit and my wife was ready to head back to Shanghai. Not even the fabled Renaissance Center could whet her shopping appetite, and a glance at the state of the neighborhood convinced her that unbuckling her car seat was not in the order of the day.

I was tempted to send my thoughts to the Tribune editor suggesting that the U.S. soldier be considered the ‘person of the year.’ It turned out we were not too far apart in our musings. But in the working class suburb of Detroit where joining the military is the preferred rite of passage for its young, the war in Iraq had become a strain in family gatherings. Some families were rent by opposing positions. Others respected differences. There was a mother actively demonstrating against the war whose son was dutifully fighting it. A soldier about to be deployed received a $350 light attachable to his M16 as a Christmas present! Clearly a “Hoo ahh!” rather than a “Ho! Ho! Ho!” The unsettling reality of war sat alongside the yuletide spirit under many wintergreen Michigan fir trees.

Even in sunny Honolulu, where the Vergara menfolk were either preachers or soldiers, talk around the dining table resembled those during the Vietnam War. A nephew who went semper fi and did a tour in Kuwait reflected on his five-year experience in the military. Gone was the unquestioning loyalty to an organization that once was the object of his devotion. Though time spent in service is not regretted, and while his uniform remains in spanking sharp condition for the occasional ceremonial use, the heart had long ago forsaken the culture it represented. While the guarantee of a college education and the offerings of the Navy Post Exchange and Commissary are nothing to sneer about, the confession heard was that something of the soul was bargained in the process.

Cindy Sheehan of the Camp Casey fame was joined by a former high State Department official who resigned in protest over the Bush war policies in Honolulu at the UH University Church at the Crossroads. This Vergara uncle lent his support. Two law enforcement siblings quietly nodded their respect for the position taken. The wrench in the family relations, however, will remain there a while.

CNMI members of the Echo Company that saw tour of duty in Iraq are coming home. Island posts and trees are festooned with yellow ribbons and hanging banners. In a culture that asks “if one can hear the taro growing,” one might be forgiven the warm yet ambivalent holler; “yell me a yeller rag.” To the folks in uniform, welcome home!

PSS payroll glitch

Like most families, post-holiday financial over-extension is a reality to deal with, and wrestling the credit card balance ranks high along with ensuring the mortgage payment and providing sufficient funds for the automatic car loan deduction. So the PSS payroll glitch was not a welcome occurrence to many teachers’ bank accounts.

Adding insult to injury was the reported response from central office personnel. The suggestion that teachers would have to file for a tax rebate to get what is their due was enough to get me talking about a teachers’ strike come Monday morning. Mr. Waldo’s promise that teachers will get their money back, only that it will take some time, is not very reassuring. It sounds like the politicians’ campaign promise that the CUC fuel surcharge will be abolished. Now we are told on the latter that it, too, “will take some time.”

I suppose we could use a less dismissive explanation other than that it was a computer glitch (all programming are human entered) and we only have one single payroll employee who presumably is greatly challenged to unglitch the glitch!

First 100 days

This comment is not to be taken as a violation of the unwritten creed that the press would maintain a honeymoon period for a hundred days with any new administration in government. This being an opinion column probably should not count. I do think that Governor Fitial’s inaugural speechwriters underserved the cause of the new administration. To begin by speculating on what-could-have-been had the election of 2001 been different smacks of senile suppositions. What followed was also a narrow reading of events that led to our current situation.

Two of our practicing literary econoheads, economist Bill Stewart and irreverent number cruncher Ed Stephens, have both pointed to the critical effects of the U.S. dollar devaluation of the Reagan years, the bursting of the Asian economic bubble late 90s, and the provisions of the NAFTA agreement and the WTO accord relative to garment industry U.S. export-import rules, on the CNMI economy. Not unlike the rest of the world, political decisions and arrangements are subservient to volatile market forces rather than the other way around. Even the best centrally planned economies do not behave as projected, or carefully directed. To therefore characterize the last four years as a case of “slumping economy and loss of financial integrity” belongs to campaign rhetoric rather than clear-headed analysis. What was projected to this reader was an ingenious way out should matters do not turn out as promised. “Are you better off than four years ago” is rhetoric in the campaign trail of a four-year circus cycle, not the bridge-building and confidence-constructing demands of an inaugural speech.

Winning the assent, consent and support of the 78 percent who did not choose the Ben&Tim tandem should perhaps be high in this administration’s agenda. This is not served well by idle speculations, senile or otherwise.

Radical Honesty

Honesty is a quality currently emphasized in the Virtues program at my school. A movement is afoot since 1994 when psychotherapist and stress management practitioner Brad Blanton wrote his best seller, Radical Honesty. Why truth telling should be now considered radical is indicative of how well we have become inured to the narrow confines of our imagined and mentallly constructed universes.

Publishing a revised second edition last year, the practice of radical honesty simply follows what we already know about the nature of language and communication. The beginning point of any useful discourse is the objective and narrative level rather than the evaluative and judgmental level. Spins and lies, myths and superstitions have a way of weighing down on the possibilities of understanding and intimacy among people. Radical honesty is profound to the degree that we have taken the Cartesian dictum too singularly up our heads to instruct our colons. “I think, therefore, I am,” have made us live lives confined to the limits of our minds. To rediscover the glorious and magnificent complexity of our bodies and our sensate experiences is liberation indeed.

An illusion I dispelled quickly among my 11-year-old six graders is the image of innocence. One of my surprisingly cynical students would rhetorically comment on a discomforting subject with the statement: “Is this something we ought to know about?” At first, I thought that perhaps, some realities are too “adult” to discuss with 11 year olds, e.g., cases of domestic violence already in the public domain. Then I started opening some of the letters that students exchange among themselves when they decide not to listen to class instructions. I was surprised at the language they use, especially the name calling between two contending children. Students are not encouraged to circulate “slang” books during classes, and when I confiscate one, again, the words used to characterize friends, foes and teachers are appalling. Students are discouraged from listening to rap music and on occasion, when I catch someone’s feet shuffling and head bobbing up and down with ear phones on, I “borrow” the CD, which is usually a copy, burn a duplicate, and then listen to the music in between study times. No wonder the icy, racy and blunt southside Chicago ghetto language is familiar to these children of the warm tropical islands of the Pacific!

Sixth graders are hardly innocent. Their symbol system are accrued and learned. Their universe is that of MTV and other popular culture media, and at worst, their world reflects the soft and slimy underbelly of counter culture. Practice of radical honesty will be most helpful if it begins in the home.

Sorrow for StarPO

There were a lot about this December to remember that were personally painful, not to mention the encounter with the senility of my parents, which of course, was a stark reminder of what awaits one’s journey. That I was emotionally exhausted upon returning from an off-island trip to Honolulu and Detroit, I nevertheless remained steadfast and composed. All of that came crashing down upon viewing the last break-in at STaRPO in Chalan Kanoa. A voluntary parent-teacher center to deal with issues surrounding families with children classified as developmentally challenged, the fifth burglary in six months was just too depressing to face, not to mention the daunting task of seeking replacements of equipment stolen and appliances destroyed. I caught myself shedding tears.

The fact that neighbor Mt. Carmel School and the Cathedral had also been broken into is no consolation. My policeman neighbor informed me that there has been a spate of burglaries in the neighborhood, especially during the holidays.

Shedding tears came as liberation. Mental illusions dispelled, we begin again.