Back From Hawaii

28 April 2019

[Above photo: It is easy to see how the not-so-hidden persuader, aided by palm trees in the background, would make you want to buy this Mustang!]

Maui had its moments but overall was a disappointment. There are many reasons, among them the amount of building covering beautiful habitat, the ever-present awareness of the American Colonial Enterprise and wealth inequality, and the fact that while we hiked our car was broken into and Linda’s bag with wallet was stolen. A few days later we realized the camping gear rental and campground we paid for did not exist. A scam.  Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?  Two years all over southern Africa and 4 months in Myanmar and nothing of that sort, except my stupidly giving my debit card at an ATM in the Johannesburg airport to a man I’d previously, half-consciously, pegged as having done hard time. And as (hopefully) happens in relationships, Linda and I spent significant time openly recalibrating ours, necessary but not easy.

The wedding was lovely and it was fun to meet, again in many cases, friends and family of Linda’s brother and nephew. Plantation House, the venue on a lawn over the beach, couldn’t have been more romantic and the bride and groom and their guests looked so beautiful and handsome and happy that it was almost unreal, yet it wasn’t.

We spent 3 nights with Linda’s friends from Samoa who now live on Maui and another night on Oahu with friends of ours from Malawi, all of whom we enjoyed. We drove the road to Hana which was lovely.  Perhaps we are jaded from our travels, but  we were not stunned by it, as I expected to be.  Linda and I took a hike into the crater of Haleakala, starting at the 10,000+ foot summit. I’d forgotten how thin the air is at that height. When I was 12yo we moved from Seattle to Denver for my mother to do her psychiatric residency. The first weekend we arrived our cousins, who lived near the Coors brewery in Golden, took us hiking up Greys and Torreys Peaks (both 14,000 ft) in the Rockies. At about 11,800 feet I had to lie down; it felt like someone had planted an ax in my skull. This time I was just a bit short of breath with a tightness in my chest on the uphill. We came up as fast as we went down, so perhaps I could wise up and slow down.

Today I went to the ever-intriguing Bogyoke Market. As goofy as I may appear as an absent-minded professor, I don’t want it to be contrived and I know that my plaid short sleeve shirts from the Ellsworth Goodwill look stupid with my longyis. So I bought three more white short-sleeve shirts, three longyi, and asked my seamstress to make me a black cord. I confess that this is cowardice on my part, as I’ll use it in a concealed way to insure against a wardrobe malfunction with my longyi. Freud pointed out how much we sacrifice in restraining our lustful and murderous instincts to construct and maintain civilization. The resultant advantages are that we shouldn’t have to be constantly alert and anxious about catastrophe striking, as are all the herbivores regularly being stalked by carnivores. For me, it’s just that my longyi will come undone. I do think I am mastering how to secure it, yet it needs re-snugging at least 2x/day. I see men do this unconsciously all the time as they walk along the sidewalk. I don’t want to have to worry about it.

After I found my seamstress and she set about making the black cord that I wanted, I wandered around the market, ending up in a large tea shop. I had fresh mango juice with ice, ordered another to go to give to the seamstress, and perused the 7 menus, double-sided, lying on the stainless steel table. It always tickles and puzzles me when I see dishes like “Noddle Soup” (Sleep-inducing?), “Fried Water Convolvulus” (Which sounds anatomical, like afterbirth or intestine.), and, simply, “Fried Water” (“I can whip up something simple for supper.”). No proofreading? No one fluent enough to glance over the menus and correct the most misleading items?  They wouldn’t even have to know Burmese. I’ll admit, I was tempted to order all three, but I wasn’t hungry and restrained myself.

I returned home to find no electricity, so on this day when it was 102F, down from 105F yesterday, I had to trudge up 9 floors and enter an oven, moving little, drinking copiously, and using my fan to create a tiny breeze. I tied a bandana around my head as the sweat literally gushed out of my scalp and followed gravity. It is amazing how the evaporation created by a little fan directing air over me provided such a sense of comfort and cooling. I always loved those Hollywood films—Clark Gable? Ava Gardner? Sidney Greenstreet?—where someone is sitting on a veranda and a “brown boy” is pulling a rope that operates a huge rattan fan. I was not very PC in my late 1940’s-early 1950’s youth, it seems. It seemed so appealingly exotic to me. Another word, exploitative, now comes to mind. I doubt that is in Hizhonor’s vocabulary.

I submitted a Letter to the Editor of the NYTimes this morning and since I never get mine published and like the way it turned out, here it is, self-published:

To the Editor:

David Bentley Hart in “Can We Please Relax About Socialism?” (4/28/2019) presents a welcome antidote to the hysteria surrounding it. The motives of those who demonize it are clear. For “Small government” read “No social safety net or constraints on the wealthy”. “Free market” equates with “The rich deserve all they can get”.  “Socialized medicine” is an advertising agency trope from the 1940’s designed to sink single payer health care, conflating “socialism” with “totalitarian communism”.

Democratic socialism shares our wealth, lending a hand to our most vulnerable. Unfettered capitalism does the opposite, abandoning those struggling and least able and encouraging the already-rich to bank all.

Social issues, such as religion, homosexuality, and reproductive choice are cynically employed to distract from this agenda.

Bless those who are illuminating it.

I’d like to say the Times will go down in my estimation if they don’t publish this, but not really. They get thousands per day—a crap shoot, like getting into Harvard or Stanford. I interviewed in Berkeley for Harvard for several years with a wonderful architect and Radcliffe graduate, Christie Coffin. She and I saw the most amazing kids, so smart and accomplished. I was a complete nebbish, compared with them, when I applied back in 1957. None of those we interviewed were accepted—none! I now think that as glorious as some reputations and facilities may be, college is what you make of it. A smaller school, emphasizing teaching and faculty/student relationships, would provide a much better experience for many, if not with the same prestige. My best educational experience was my psychiatry residency and child fellowship at UC Davis. It was a tiny department in a very new medical school situated in trailers but led by very capable people whose door was always open to us. You never know.

I’m assembling the mid-term exam for my class. It is hard work, getting those questions right. Stefan, my Chief in Malawi, completed an advanced degree in Medical Education and helped me learn how to write them. Today will be spent going over lectures and culling out important points to shape into queries. Hopefully I’ll learn something about how effective, or not, my teaching is and the students can learn something about how effective their learning is. Since this is a new experience for us both and a cross-cultural one, we are all learning as we go. I’ve told the students that they can use the exam toward their final grade (Pass/Fail) if they choose. I think that exams should be accessories to learning not judgements, as they are usually employed. I want them to come out of an examination knowing more, the same as after a lecture or problem-based learning exercise.  If someone is going to be clinically unsafe because they lack knowledge, understanding, or capacity, they’ll have a chance to improve or to stop the training.

The temperature is now 92F and rising rapidly. I love the doors and windows open. A breeze comes through, along with the music of voices raised in praise from the Baptist Church on the corner. I, however, am beginning to wilt and I must shut all openings and flip on the air-con, confining myself to a 17×10.5 foot room. I cool only the living room and it to 82F when I am here in the daytime. I cool my bedroom to 80F when I sleep. Now, cooler, I revive and can think and work.

AOC and her cohorts are speaking Truth to Power, somehow more powerfully than Bernie. He is easier to marginalize, I think.  Being young and fresh, AOC et al carry more hope and are easier to identify with. I celebrate them and simultaneously worry for them, as their message is threatening to the most wealthy in America, some of whom are utterly unscrupulous at stirring their base to rage.