I checked my mail today. I do this most days, usually as I’m heading off to teach in the evenings. It’s often the first time in the day I step outside.

Hello, World!

World doesn’t seem too interested. Maybe the mailbox has some love for me. Newspaper, hand cream sample, an official, plain brown envelope. Those official, plain brown envelopes scare the hell out of me. I fear them more than any other envelope in the entire universe. They hail from the Finance Office and usually contain messages like:

Dear Mr. XXXX, In reference to your state-recognized status as an independent, albeit non-certified, teacher of the English language and translator (yet again non-certified) of German language texts into English language texts, the latter of which is primarily performed using a home computer featuring a QWERTZ keyboard and a full cup of coffee dangerously exceeding the proximity radius of open-container beverages to technically sensitive equipment as determined by German federal law (§G94.3-h1 MBS), we hereby require from you the following documents:

• 2004 income statement
• Proof of insurance from the last 20 years
• High school diploma
• Detailed record of family lineage dating back to the Cambrian period

These documents are to be submitted in original A4 format with lace trim and maybe a flower or a silly clown in the top left corner, as this helps bring a smile to our faces. If you do not furnish us with the requested information, we will ban you from our country for all eternity.

Respectfully yours….

The mere sight of the brown envelope made me break out in that rash again.

But then I saw my new copy of Vanity Fair had come, and the brown envelope disappeared. In a tram on my way to work, I pulled the magazine out of its opaque plastic and saw a cover so horrible, so monstrous, so utterly grotesque, I stuffed it away in my bag before anyone else could see. Could see it. Could see me with it. Do you want to know what it was? Wanna see it? Well, then…

I acknowledge that by viewing this picture I do not hold Chris, The Typing Chimps or even FEMA responsible for any psychological damage I may incur as a result.

Yes. Paris Hilton. Vanity Fair boasts it is “glossy on the outside, gritty on the inside”. Fair enough. No magazine is going to sell with Gore Vidal, Leonard Bernstein or Stanley Kubrick on the cover, but Paris Hilton? Miss I’ve-got-nothing-but-vacancies? This has gone too far. Jennifer Anniston, Nicole Kidman, Martha Stewart, a new crop of models from Eastern Europe have all made it difficult for me to read my copy in any café or bus without self-consciously folding back the cover. I mean, what would the others think? If they saw me. ‘Cos everybody looks at me, you know, just to see what I’m reading. They would think: “Chris likes to read magazines that put rich show-business people on its covers.” How am I supposed to bounce back from that? I want to shout to them “Damnit, I’m reading the serious articles! The gritty ones!” And now her. If anyone had caught me with this mag I would have been ruined in this town. The risk was too great. Instead, I waited until I got home to read it - it and the contents in the official, plain brown envelope.

“Schröder is an arrogant windbag who doesn’t know democracy from a popularity contest.” This Andre’s umpteenth dig that evening at the German Chancellor, who, according to democracy, had just lost the Big Race the day before by 0.7%. Since then, everyone but Schröder seems to have accepted it. Contrary to all pre-election surveys, the media-savvy Chancellor and his party managed a photo-finish outcome with the odds-favorite CDU party. And before the pundits could begin their rounds on the I-told-you-so TV news circuit, he threw the election results into doubt by claiming victory for himself, leaving the other parties scratching their pointy heads and a large portion of the public fuming.

Katrin and I sat across from Andre and Tina in the small bar around the corner, the one that’s so small everyone can hear what you’re saying and judge you harshly for it. Andre had a lot to say. I focused on my beer glass, cupped in both hands like some mystical source of inner serenity, trying to ignore the looks and whispers coming from the others in the bar who apparently ran out of their own conversation topics. I looked at Katrin, who looked at Tina, who looked at Andre who seemed to be directing his frustration at me alone. I can’t say I felt honored. If I felt anything, it was duped. When they rang at our door that evening to get a drink with us somewhere, nobody mentioned anything about political tirades. It’s like getting invited to a friend’s and then having to sit through some endless Amway spiel. Although I should have declined on the spot, I was tempted by the palpable promise of beer, laughter and forgetting the unfinished translation that was already behind schedule. Just an hour? I asked, my voice quivering with willful naivety over the speaker phone. Yes, just an hour. his voice crackled obligingly through the receiver.

Two hours later I was caught in one of those moments that make for passable sitcom material but are ironically very un-funny when YOU are the hapless yet lovable main character: I was discussing politics in a bar with a deeply offended and opinionated drunk in a foreign language. But as outraged as he was, there was something else in Andre’s monologue that made me think this was more than just some self-righteous knucklehead blindly defending his party as if it were his favorite college football team – the kind of political support I’m used to in the US. What made his rant actually worth considering was his grasp of the various party agenda, his willingness to look at the issue from many sides and, above all, his sincere concern for the democratic process. “How is anyone supposed to take voting seriously if the majority doesn’t win?” Encouraged by my second beer – a tacit surrender to any pretense of being a serious free lance translator – I took the opportunity of the rhetorical question to offer an answer.

“I think that’s how modern democracy’s supposed to work.”

This bit of cryptic bluffery got his attention, and he asked me to elaborate. At this point in the sitcom there’s a close-up of my face as my eyes grow wide with panic, what-you-talkin’-‘bout-Willis style. The studio audience laughs, because it knows that the hapless yet lovable main character isn’t able to elaborate; his beer-fueled courage got him into this, now let’s watch as his insufficient German skills try to get him out. To my surprise, I managed better than I expected. Isn’t most of politics about acting and appearance, anyway? I appealed. Is it reasonable to expect substance and fair play from politicians when they only offer us rehashed slogans and empty promises during their campaign? Could it be that Schröder is, in fact, the more honest of the two? He’s embraced the media, used it to his advantage. If anyone is to blame for his stooping to this new low in German politics, isn’t it the German public?

[Cue syrupy moral music] I may not have convinced Andre of my views, and he may not have convinced me of his, but as Katrin and I walked home that chilly, September evening, I felt that somehow, some way, we added another few meters to the bridge that would one day span the gap between our two worlds. And wasn’t that worth the bad hangover and missed deadline?

It’s good to see some things don’t change wherever you might find yourself. In the run-up to today’s election, Germany has been subjected to campaign posters besmirching the landscape over the last few weeks, all of them promising - what else? - a better tomorrow. The two biggest parties, the SPD (the Social Democratic Party of Germany) and the CDU (the Christian Democratic Union of Germany), naturally have the most notable campaign presence. This is my second German Chancellor election, and I’m not surprised at all how similar the slogans and promises are to those in the US - voters seem to eat this crap no matter where they’re fed it. Here’s a billboard from the CDU I saw while walking to work. It features their candidate, Angela Merkel:

“A new beginning.” Stunning. It’s at times like this when I ask myself why I didn’t get a BA in federal election campaign slogan writing instead of social and behavioral sciences. I come up with some uniquely inspiring gem like “A new beginning” and get paid more for it than I do for translating a 79-page user manual for conveyor belt software. Gerhard Schroeder, current Chancellor and running SPD candidate, went for something a bit more striking:

Is this guy running for Chancellor or neighborhood superhero? Powerful? Brave? Humane? I’m sorry, Gerhard, but as much as I like you, the thought of ‘Super Schroeder’ in red tights and a cape does not instill confidence in me. Then again, I’m not able to vote, so my opinion doesn’t count.

When I was just a wee lad, my family would take occasional trips to visit my grandma in Illinois. Because of the long distance between her town and our home in Cincinnati, I never got to know her that well; she was simply my dad’s mom. Nevertheless, I looked forward to the trips almost with as much anticipation as to Christmas for two reasons: First, I loved flying in planes. I’m not sure when my first time was; my memories are a long blur of bright, busy airports, lots of sitting and the miniature plastic model jets and TWA captain’s pins the flight attendants gave to only the cutest children.

Second – and this is what had me wound up like a conservative radio talk show host on prescription medication – we had our dinner the night before at Burger Chef. It was the one time in the year we were permitted to eat fast food and then only because my mom was already in vacation mode and didn’t want to have to do the dishes. As a kid I didn’t care what her reasoning was for our annual excursion to greaseburger heaven; my only concern was tearing open that bulky styrofoam box, unraveling the thick wax paper wrapper and finally devouring the contents buried inside. Then I’d have a go at the large french-fries and strawberry shake, inhaling it all in the wink of an eye so there was still time to relieve my little brother of his own feast. Afterwards we were stuffed - well, except for my brother. The only evidence that we had ordered any food at all was the unappetizing midden of non-recyclable materials left on the table, a miniature version of the bloated landfill it was destined for.

As a child, I never gave a second’s thought to waste and recycling. The only thing that bothered me about all that packaging surrounding my food was the extra time it took to get at the interesting part, kind of like sexy lingerie on a street-corner call girl - or so I’ve heard…. Nowadays things are different. For starters, there is no more Burger Chef. And over the years, the fast food industry has been shamed into reducing and refining the paper and plastics used. Never wanting to let a good deed go unpraised, the burger-flipping business sees to it that any time they use less waste or introduce a lower wattage red lamp there’s a major press release. This is an understandable tactic; it’s all about PR - shaping your image.

Sometimes, however, no matter how hard you try, it’s nearly impossible to shed some of the more adhesive labels that society has justly or unjustly slapped on your lapel. Case in point: my wife works for a government ministry here. A few days ago she had to write a press release about a burger behemoth which just joined an environmental alliance in Saxony: their refrigerated trucks are using only organic diesel (?), they’re using more recycled/able materials, the soft drinks are delivered in concentrated form and the milk comes from well-adjusted cows raised in middle to upper-class families. On the whole, quite admirable.

But while the industry has perhaps made baby steps toward dropping the environmental catastrophe reputation it has carried for so long, there’s another blight on their hide, a wart on their nose, a Celtic pattern tattoo around their wrist, an ‘I voted for Bush - TWICE‘ bumper sticker sun-baked on their car that will be impossible to remove.

And yet, they try.

The day after my wife sent off the press release, she got a not-too-pleasant call from a representative of the company. It seems she used a term not befitting their dining establishments nor the industry in general. My wife, mentally reviewing the flattering statement she had composed the day before, couldn’t imagine what slanderous remark the man on the phone was referring to. “We are NOT,” he huffed indignantly, “a fast food chain. We are a franchise restaurant.” What to do? She had to write what was essentially a retraction/apology – a press release to a press release, so to speak. Who’s going to read that? About as many people as will refer to a fast food joint as a “franchise restaurant”.

Late Saturday evening, Katrin and I wanted to see a film. There must be five small cinemas within walking distance of our apartment. They rarely offer the same thing, so if you don’t like what’s showing at one, you mosey on to the next. There’s usually a lot of mozying on a Saturday night, but we finally bought tickets to see ‘Team America’ at a one-screen cinema called ‘Casablanca’ on the edge of our neighborhood. We had some good laughs throughout the film, which takes trenchant shots at the groundless “might makes right” mindset of so many Americans as well as a few jabs at its knee-jerk counterpart.

As unbeloved as the US has become in the world these last 5 years, I’m always left scratching my head at so much mainstream evidence suggesting that we as Americans are well aware of our glaring flaws and can even examine and ridicule them with finer wit and sharper bite than any of our global critics, yet we take it no further. The Simpsons, The Daily Show, South Park and a slew of other prime-time shows nimbly diffuse a growing crisis or national neurosis by smoothing its hard edges with jokes tailored around self-deprecation. We laugh on cue, drink the rest of our beer and go to bed.

It’s like living with four people in one house and you’re the asshole who never does the dishes; you blissfully ignore them as they pile up, eventually to be washed by the first one to crack. Your four exasperated roommates confront you about this, and instead of denying it or firing back with accusations of your own, you agree with them, make jokes about it and even have them doubling over with laughter and buying you drinks at the end of the evening. The next day, however, a macaroni-and-cheese encrusted pot lie abandoned in the sink. Far from a road to recovery, admission, it seems, is the first step toward absolution.

America: F**K YEAH!

My arm is killing me. It’s the left arm, so I can still do important things like manipulate the mouse and scratch my head, but other things like tying my shoes or paging through the newspaper are a bit uncomfortable. The doctor said the discomfort should only last a few days. She also mentioned in that characteristically patronizing doctor-tone that a tetanus shot is something I should have received years ago. “Accidents can happen at any time,” she admonished. I felt like responding “better late than never,” but she had a needle buried in my shoulder, so I just nodded earnestly.

It also didn’t seem wise at that point to confess to her I hadn’t been to a doctor for a check-up since boot camp in 1990. Not particularly bright, perhaps, but I’m not the biggest fan of doctors, who pander to our quick-fix addiction by eagerly prescribing colorful pills for any variety of psychosomatic conditions we conjure up. Why support such a racket unless it’s unavoidable?

Katrin and I are going to Israel for two weeks this November; tetanus-diphtheria and measles shots are recommended. While sitting in the waiting room, I wondered what other immunization shots I should have but don’t. Could I just get them all now? I scanned the room for an a la carte menu hanging on a wall, but all I saw were pictures of disease-carrying mutant ticks enlarged one million times on posters with ominous titles (“Tick tick tick – It’s just a matter of time…”). Are there ticks in Jerusalem? Do I need that shot, too?

As we walked outside with bandages on our arms, it seemed my environment was now a-hum with invisible kamikazes, all aiming their suicide aircraft toward whatever exposed flesh their proboscises could penetrate. Katrin didn’t appear the least bothered by this so I stayed alert for both of us. Instead I casually asked her if she knew of a good family doctor where a fella could get a check-up. Accidents can happen at any time, you know.

Excuse the cliché, but did anyone see where the summer went? Yesterday morning I woke up and was terrified to learn that it’s my first day of teaching English for the semester. I never saw it coming. Usually I count the weeks, days, minutes and nanoseconds of remaining freedom before I have to start correcting homework, make lesson plans, kiss my evenings goodbye and take an active interest in my general appearance once again (I’m not really a self-starter when it comes to shaving). This time, however, I drifted through the last two weeks of summer holiday as if it wouldn’t end, oblivious to lesson plans, schedules, and personal hygiene.

As I stood in front of the mirror trying to remember if you’re supposed to shave up or down on the neck, I suffered a mild panic attack: Do I have all the material I need? Have I forgotten any of the grammar rules? Can modal auxiliary verbs be used in first conditional sentences as well, or just second conditional? Ow! Just how old is this razor blade, anyway? It’s amazing how quickly this stuff evaporates through the pores in your head during the summer break. And because I didn’t have much of a break to begin with, I wasn’t fully prepared for yesterday.

I stood in front of the class of 11 students, still sweating from the full sprint I just took to get there on time after having gone to the wrong school. The adult education center I work for, the Volkshochschule, rents rooms at other schools across the city. Normally I like this because I get a change of scenery every semester. But this can also lead to confusion at the beginning of the semester, when you forget to account for the time you need to find not only the right building, but the right entrance, too. I had mixed the name of one school, the 34^th Vocational School Center, with the 43^rd Vocational School Center. The two are about a half-hour walk from each other. I wandered aimlessly through the dark, empty halls of the 43^rd in search of my room, until a sinking feeling told me it was going to be one of those days. Finally, I realized my biannual blunder and raced to the 34^th.

Despite unnerving the students for the first half hour with my profuse sweating, heavy breathing and semi-dry trickle of blood on my ample adam’s apple (note: shave down, not up), the evening turned out to be a rousing success. They weren’t exactly giving me high-fives and backslaps at the end, but we did get through the present perfect simple without a single suicide attempt. No time to rest on the laurels, though. Next week we’re learning conditional sentences. First and second!

Katrina update: I didn’t even know Keith Olbermann wasn’t at ESPN anymore. Take a look at what he has to say on MSNBC.

…and also watch this very emotional portion of Tim Russert’s interview with Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.

I promise this story will have a happy ending. I do, I do! It’s like an episode of Law and Order (the original one): it starts out with a terrible crime, points a finger at someone who looks suspiciously likely to be guilty, and then introduces completely new characters in the second half of the story. Anyway, to begin:

Last year, when hurricanes Ivan, Frances, and Jean waltzed through Florida, all three happened to pay a visit at or near my grandparent’s home in Jensen Beach, FL. My mom and some of her siblings actually rode through Hurricane Jean–they had gone down to assess the damage to my grandparents’ house from Ivan and Frances (basically unlivable). They didn’t leave because my grandparents, who were 88 and 92 at the time, had just spent over a month away from their home and ridden two days in a car to get back to it. Their spirits were low and their energy depleted. I don’t think they could have physically taken being evacuated, so they stayed. Afterwards they were devastated, but at no point was there the despair, isolation, or breakdown in social order that we see now along the Gulf Coast.

Simply put, not everyone can leave, even when it is in their best interest. I think many people would have welcomed the opportunity to evacuate as they did not have the means themselves. Sure, there are some people who don’t think it’s going to be bad, think they can ride it out, but a lot of people don’t have the means to leave. Regardless of why people stay, the government has to know that there are going to be people there during any event like this. It’s lunacy to say, at this juncture, gee golly, we didn’t expect this! And then not respond in a timely fashion to the problem. I think what we’re seeing here is a problem rooted in economics more than anything else. The people affected by this belong to a growing lower-lower-middle class in this country who live paycheck to paycheck, don’t have insurance, and can’t, surprise surprise, adequately plan for a disaster of this scale.

I think the Brits have us pegged, as I had to agree with everything in this article here and felt the by-now-standard shame at reading some of the deluded comments beneath it. Hopefully they’ll post my comment at some point and you can read my scathing review of those posts, tee-hee. Seriously, WHAT DOES IT TAKE, PEOPLE to admit there are problems in the U.S.? Little wonder they don’t get solved generation to generation, just passed again and again.

I have to remind myself here that a lot of Americans truly don’t believe that there is a race problem in the U.S., that everyone has equal access to resources and opportunity. Every semester my anthropology students write papers on the subject of race, and every single semester, without exception, several people answer the question “Does race matter in the U.S.?” with something like the following:

“I think it used to matter, but that was a long time ago. Now everyone can be anything they want in life! That’s why our country is so great! We are truly the melting pot, or rather, the salad bowl of the world, and it is our diversity that makes us great. After all, if we were all the same, how boring would that be?”

Or, a time-honored favorite, the “white guy rhapsody,” as I like to call it:

“Yes, I think race matters, especially when it comes to things like scholarships. I was not eligible for any scholarships because I am a white male, and I think that’s unfair. I had to take out loans but someone else who is black could apply for a scholarship.”

Okay, I admit: the answers I get aren’t exactly like this. There’s usually less punctuation and at least one or two spelling errors. But I am serious when I say I get these kinds of answers from my 18+ college students. I can’t even imagine being inside this kind of mind, actually looking at the world around myself and believing this is true. Is it my age? Am I just not hip? Do I just not get what the kids are doing these days??

But getting back on point, here. I think the only possible good that’s coming from Katrina is that it has more effectively forced the issue of poverty and lack of opportunity than anything else in recent history. This sucker can’t be hidden, it can’t be ignored, and it’s going to be the pink-elephant-wearing-a-really-attention-grabbing-feather-boa in the room for a long time to come. This being the case, maybe a useful dialogue will be opened on the subject.

Okay, so that was the first half of the show (insert Law and Order “doink-doink” sound here). So what’s the happy ending? How can there be one? Well, New Orleans is, I think we can all agree, a long way away from a happily ever after at the moment, a looooong way. We must therfore look elsewhere for the moment–or a lot of elsewheres, as the case may be. Over the past week or so I have come across several scientific achievements or inventions that give me hope for the future and in humanity. Sound bold? Sure. Sound corny? Maybe a little. But read on and see what I mean:

The Lifestraw: a personal water filtration system that is basically the size of a drinking straw. Can filter bacteria from turgid water, has a lifespan of approx. one year (about 6 months if used on seawater, which I think is nothing short of miraculous anyway), and can be produced for about $2 per straw. No electricity or moving parts required: you simply suck water through it and the filtration system within the straws removes the harmful gunk. Read more here.

The Refugee Radio: again, few parts, cheap to make. It is a DIY radio that runs not on electricity, but on radio waves. The thing I absolutely love about this invention is that because there is so little to it, it can be easily personalized by whoever puts it together. I think this can be a psychological aid for people who have few possessions of their own (as is most often the case in refugee situations). Read more about this here.

Lab grown meat: okay, this one sounds a little weird, but it has the potential to provide the world with meat that doesn’t involve slaughtering animals or exploiting the environment. Basically, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Growing animal tissue in lab to be turned into, er, dinner. Read more about this here.

Infrared sensitive solar power: solar panels are a great alternate energy source, but they use only the light in the visible spectrum. Prof. Ted Sargent and his team at the University of Toronto have invented a way to utilize the suns invisible rays, or infrared, to create energy. I’m fuzzy on how this works, but they use teeeeny tiny nanocrystals that can catch the infrared rays and convert them to electricity. The particles are so small that they can be suspended in a liquid medium, which means they can be effectively painted or sprayed onto materials or fabric. Read more about this here.

The $100 laptop: Several universities and companies are trying to develop this, but I think MIT is in the lead right now. The idea is to provide laptops as educational tools in underdeveloped countries. They can do almost everything a regular laptop can do except store huge amounts of data (1 GB hard drive space, which still ain’t bad). You would be able to recharge it via handcrank or “wind-up” power. Read more about this here.

So. Some things to hope for in the future. It’s nice to know that there are people out there taking practical steps to improve the quality of life for other humans.

Katrin and I spent Saturday in Berlin. Fighting the temptation of resting our spinning heads and tired bones after a late night of drinking and dancing (I drank, Katrin danced), we took an early train to my favorite city and former residence for a bit of sightseeing and to meet a friend. The city held some bad vibes for us, which I wanted to exorcise so that we’d want to come back more often.

The last time we were there together was to paint over the yellow and blue walls in our apartment (closet Swedes?) situated on a busy street between Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain. Our move back to Dresden had been long and frustrating, and restoring the Berlin apartment to its previous pristine condition was our last chore. Neither of us was much in the mood to spend our weekend - the only time we saw each other during our two-year, long-distance relationship - painting and cleaning, but there we were.

I had intended to keep things light, like those Brady Bunch/Full House teamwork montages in which somebody accidentally gets wallpapered or a bucket of paint lands on someone’s head. I always watched such scenes, marveling at how cool the unfortunate victim (are there fortunate victims, too?) remained while gooey, latex paint burned away his retinas. Sadly, my own life doesn’t reflect such sit-coms. When I looked at the zebra-stripe pattern of new paint and old paint on the wall which Katrin had declared finished, I was less than enthusiastic and offered a few undiplomatically critical remarks regarding attention to detail and a colossal waste of time. Imagine my shock when she didn’t respond to this with subservient stoicism. A major disagreement ensued, which almost resulted in one of us driving back to Dresden in the car while the other took a train (hint: I don’t have a license here).

We were mighty glad to see the TV tower in the rearview mirror as we finally left the city a year ago. Our trip this weekend turned out to be a good time; I think the demons are gone now. I hope this means we’ll be coming back again soon.