An Amazing Time

As we now wait for the inauguration of a new president, this is a time that many Americans, including me, will long remember. The day after the election, I put aside the front section of The New York Times--much as my dad did for the end of World War II and the first man on the moon. I found those editions, and several other headlines of momentous events, wrapped in plastic in the basement when I cleaned out the family homestead a few years ago. Now I have another to add to the collection, equally momentous. Like many Americans, I feel an enormous sense of relief that the long election campaign is over--but equally, pride at the outcome. The news media seems to be reeling as well--there just isn't as much to cover on the transition, and they have been struggling to fill the gap---with all the Sarah Palin interviews, I have to hope....isn't it moose season yet?

There are some events that you always remember where you were--for me, those include the assassination of President Kennedy, the first man on the moon, the blow up of the Challenger, and 9/11. Now I will always be able to see the news flashing across the screen, when shortly after the California polls closed, the election was called for Obama. Despite the terrible times we are in, this is a kind of sea change--a shift that had already started to happen before the election, and is being coalesced by it. I'm glad I was here in America for this. Although there is so much work ahead of this country and it doesn't appear we have hit bottom yet, there is also a feeling of hope and movement. The news channels have moved over to "the transition" and trying to second guess Presidential appointments and policies. In due course, we will know all of this for sure, just like the outcome of the election, but it's fun re-watching Saturday Night Live just being able to laugh, this time with no sense of stress at the outcome.

Within a couple of days of the election, fall went into its blustery stage. We had Indian summer days for the election and the days leading up to it, but for the past two weeks it has been windy, cold, and the trees are mostly bare. This is the first sign of winter. I am in Keene at the moment, which is at the eastern end of the time zone, and it is getting dark very early--around 4:30 p.m. That's another harbinger of winter. Seems impossible that it's already a year that I was getting ready to come back to the U.S.

Seward's Folly Revisited

Only four more days until the U.S. presidential election. I know people are watching this around the world, and some are doing even more than that--I saw a newscast the other day about an Australian who felt so strongly about it that she came to the U.S. to volunteer on the Obama campaign, and I've gotten notes from people in other parts of the world, as well. The U.S. still casts an incredibly long shadow, and our choice here really matters.

So that I could volunteer on Election Day, I filed my absentee ballot a couple of weeks ago. I also helped my dad with his. Although he understands very little, I still went through the process of showing him, and trying to explain, the ballot. I got the shock of my life. This is a man who can say "I love you" , "I love everybody" and very little else--he certainly can't carry on a conversation (though at times he tries). But, when I showed him the ballot, pen in hand, and said, "Dad, are you still a Democrat?" he looked right at me and replied, his eyes flashing, "You're damn right I am!" Well, I guess we know his vote.....

This election has consumed most of America for the last couple of months, and a lot of the people I talk to will be relieved when it's over. The daily polls, campaign speeches (we went to see Joe Biden when he spoke here several weeks ago), the ad campaigns, exhaustive commentary and analysis, and the political satire--it's gotten old, and enough already (especially "Joe the Plumber"). There is one impact of the last few weeks, however, that I didn't expect, and it's a little odd--maybe it's something I will get over in the fullness of time. And that is my sudden and visceral aversion to Alaska.

The press and bloggers--not to mention Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show--have commented on Sarah Palin ad infinitum. Think of her what you will, you have to give her credit for providing endless fodder for comic relief in what has been a very high stakes, high tension election. But as a candidate for the second highest office in the land, she has also added noticeably to many people's stress level--as unimaginable as it seemed that anyone could top the hubris of George Bush, she has done so. A very scary lady indeed to have in a position of power.

I didn't realize quite how I had been impacted by this ongoing saga until the other day when I came across a beautiful 2009 calendar of scenic Alaska that I picked up when Marty and I went on our cruise earlier this year. I looked at it and found myself thinking, "nah, I really don't want to hang this anywhere--maybe I need to look for another one." Then, a day or so later, we got a promotional flyer from Princess Cruises on Alaska offerings next year. While we didn't plan to go back for another four or five years, I now found myself thinking, as I pitched the flyer onto the newspaper recycling pile, "I don't EVER want to go back." Of course, this is just unfair--Alaska boasts spectacular scenery and there were places we didn't get to see that we thought we might enjoy next time. But, at least for now, I'm completely soured on the place.

In American history, the acquisition of the Alaska territory was known for many years as "Seward's Folly" --for William Seward, Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln/Andrew Johnson, who negotiated the purchase from Russia of what was widely considered a frozen wasteland. That moniker got submarined when gold, and then later oil, were discovered. Sourpuss that I've become, I'm thinking maybe it's time to bring it back...

What I Thought I'd Never Be.....

Effective this week, I'm working. I've signed on with a consulting company based in the East Coast whose clients need help with international HR matters. The work so far is by email and phone, although the company is growing rapidly so other projects requiring face to face contact could pop up. For now, this is fine with me and I'm happy to be easing back into the world of work.

The company's prinicipal offered several options for how to work with them, including full time employment, but I decided that I would rather start out as an independent contractor and see how that goes. I set myself up as a limited liability company, got an employee identification number, and opened a bank account. All of this took under two hours, and voila! I'm something I never thought I would be: a consultant.. Now that I'm on this path, I'm also toying around with the idea of trying to teach part time as well--something I had put on hold with the idea that I would be working fulltime and possibly having to commute from another part of the country. But working from home opens that back up as a possiblity.

In the meantime, the job market has all but dried up here in Detroit. Searches are still going on and I continue to get 1-2 calls or emails per week from search firms, but companies are dragging their feet and putting things on hold until the economy picks up--which could be a while.

The other thing that I'm doing is volunteering for the Obama campaign. Although Michigan appears to be solid for Obama--in fact many of the paid staffers are being transferred to the battleground states and ad coverage is being reduced here--the campaign is taking the wise strategy that "no lead is big enough." I'm happy that Obama is ahead in the polls, but the lead is by no means a comfortable one yet. It's very nervewracking as we head closer to election day.

Autumn Splendor

Fellow India blogger Basia writes glowingly of fall ("There's something about September"), and I agree with her. Now October has arrived, and with it, noticeably shorter days, cool--even mildly cold--weather, and best of all, the glorious colors of the trees as they prepare to shed their leaves for winter. After celebrating the Jewish New Year with family in Detroit, Marty and I took a quick trip to our house in Keene to catch this, and you can see that Vermont and New Hampshire did not disappoint.....

There are more photos on top on Flickr (click on one and it will take you to the whole set).

In news on the job front, I have a couple of strong possibilities, one of which I hope pans out in the next couple of weeks. Of course, the state of the economy here is pretty dismal and everyone is nervous because of the crisis on Wall Street and the recent bailout, so nothing is certain. All the more reason to take time to appreciate this glorious scenery, a reminder that the best things in life are those that carry no price tag.

The Elephant in the Room

It's time to comment on the state of the elections, especially for my non-American readers. People outside the U.S. must be shaking their heads in disbelief that the U.S. presidential race is so close. George Bush, in addition to being an unpopular president abroad, is wildly unpopular at home--71% disapprove of his performance in office, a record in U.S. history. The American economy and job losses are the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930's. The budget surplus of the Clinton years has long since disappeared--and the deficit will keep on ballooning with the latest bailout proposal, a byproduct of the un-fiscal policies of the last eight years. America is borrowing from China to wage a war in Iraq against a fictitious enemy, while the Iraqi government runs a $80 billion budget surplus. All but the wealthiest of Americans, asked the question "are you better off today than you were eight years ago" would have to answer no---even those who have avoided personal debt and invested wisely are only treading water because of the ballooning debt and eroded value of the dollar. In my life, I cannot remember a worse time--and I remember Richard Nixon.

Historically, such a scenario would have resulted in a Democratic landslide. Witness what happened to Herbert Hoover in 1932, to Gerald Ford in 1976, and to a lesser extent Clinton's victory over Bush I in 1992 (even with the added complication of Ross Perot running as an Independent). Yet, despite the sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in, many Americans who have felt the brunt of the Bush years in their personal and professional lives firsthand, and who stand to suffer even more in the future if things continue as is, are either still on the fence or siding with the Republican ticket. Are these Americans just crazy, or is something else going on here?

The rational person, including a person outside the U.S. who cannot vote but will be affected by our choice here, would look at the past eight years, review John McCain's voting record in Congress and his hot temper under pressure , look at his choice of a running mate (e.g. I can see Russia from my backyard, so that means I am qualified in foreign policy matters), and easily conclude that things under a new Republican administration will at best be the same, and possibly worse. Even a mediocre candidate from the Democratic party should be a shoo-in this year, shouldn't they? And with a smart, resourceful, inspiring, and hopeful guy like Obama, who maybe comes along once in a generation, who has pulled millions of people of all creeds and colors back into believing in the ability to effect positive change and who actually makes sense when he talks (in grammatical sentences no less)-- it should be a total blowout. Why isn't it?


It's not for one simple reason: common sense and rationality are not on center stage here. Unfortunately, a fair percentage of Americans, perhaps even more than in years past, make important decisions based on single or a few criteria divorced from the issues at hand. This is true of people who typically vote solely based on a candidate's stand on abortion, or gay rights, or gun control--all visceral issues. But it goes beyond that, and I think it's more pervasive this year. Example: a woman who went from being undecided to supporting McCain/Palin was quoted in the Detroit News the other day, saying that her decision was based on her belief that Palin "is a hockey mom like me." If this sounds like a crazy reason to pick a candidate for the highest office in the land. especially such a complicated and screwed-up land, you might ask if this woman would hire a doctor, a lawyer, or other professional on the same basis? The answer is, sad to say--quite likely she would. Because this is America, so even if her choice worked out badly, she could sue for malpractice and probably walk away with a few hundred thousand dollars or even more. Sadly, too many Americans have grown used to blaming others for their own decisions, so there is little incentive to be rational and think through even important life choices. We are simply seeing the effects of this mentality magnified in the presidential election.

But we also have something else going on that, like an elephant, is a huge but mostly silent presence in this election. In the last thirty or forty years, ethnic prejudice has gone underground in America-- but most people would agree that it has far from disappeared.

In fairness, as a country, America is a vastly different place from even 30 years ago--when it was still legal, for example, to try to disqualify me from a government job by stating openly that a woman could not be successful in a management position in Japan (I got the job, and was successful). As a testament to the fact that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama--not to mention Sarah Palin--got as far as they did, many people genuinely are more accepting of women, Jews, gays, and people who are non-Caucasian assuming leadership roles. But, for those who are still unable to trust anyone in a position of authority who is of another religion, sexual persuasian, or ethnicity--and this is no small number of my countrymen and women--the issue has merely gone below the surface, like the larger part of an iceberg. It is not politically correct to be "anti-diversity", so people remain silent, or even lie about where they stand--at least in public. When they talk to a pollster or even to a friend, they may or may not be honest--or they may encode their choice with the "values" pitch--so and so's "values" are like mine, so that's why I'm for them. . But when they go into a voting booth, with its complete privacy, they are far more likely to be true to their own beliefs.


That is why, despite all evidence that the country is on a dangerously wrong track and needs new leadership, Barack Obama's lineage is the silent elephant in this election. A few weeks ago, a union leader spoke frankly to his troops in a white, blue collar area near Detroit that in recent years has voted heavily Republican. "I know you don't like Obama because he's black, and you can't see yourself voting for a black man for president ," said the leader. "I have three words for you--get over it."


McCain's traditional Republican supporters aside, it remains to be seen if those who are undecided because of the Democratic contender's racial background, or those who have traditionally voted Democratic but are switching over because of it, "get over it" on or before Election Day. For love of country, I'm hoping--and praying- that if they can't, these people at least recognize themselves, and have the decency to sit out the election rather than cast a vote that would almost surely contribute to increasing the velocity of our present downward spiral--both at home and in the world.

The World We Can't See

This is a post off topic, though perhaps a journey through the unknown territory of a major life change produces the need to be philosophical at times. During the digital photography class on Star Island, the instructor did a module on light. Light is, of course, a very important element of good photography, as in any art. But the slide he showed and the discussion took me off in a whole different direction.

Here is the light spectrum, more correctly, the electomagnetic spectrum. The part that is visible to the human eye is a fraction of the known spectrum (I say known because the known spectrum is scientifically proven, but there may be elements at either end that have not yet been discovered). Of course, this is basic science taught in middle school. We know that our microwave and radio operate on invisible (to us) waves---invisible light is all around us. The camera's digital eye sees an even more limited range of light than we do---hence the need to adjust for it to produce photographs that are balanced in a way that is pleasing to the human viewer.

If we extend the example of light to another sense, hearing, we know that animals are able to hear a different range of vibrations from humans---dogs and cats both hear better than we do which probably explains why cats can hear the can opener on a tin of tuna fish from three rooms away. The same is true of the remaining three senses-- there has been recent publicity about dogs' ability to "smell" cancer or illness, as well as a nursing home cat who routinely entered patient rooms and camped out nearby hours before the patient died. The other night Junior bounded up from the bed and focused her attention on the ceiling, her eyes following something around the room. It woke me up, but I didn't see--or hear--a thing.

This train of thought gave me a renewed appreciation for how little we actually take in through our five senses--in the scheme of things, pretty crude instruments with which to ascertain our world. Our brains may have the capacity of 3-10 terabytes, as some scientists have posited, but to the degree that we filter through our senses, it's no wonder that we use a fraction of the brain's capacity. When I contemplate the small and distorted perspective from which I'm seeing things, it brings renewed meaning to that great line from Hamlet: "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Isles of Shoals

Marty and I went to a digital photography workshop on the Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine (half of the isles are in New Hampshire, and half in Maine). This is my last vacation for a while...with the coming of fall, I feel like a squirrel who has to gather my acorns for the long winter ahead--lots to do including, of course, the job search. But this past week was a glorious trip into late summer, with spectacular sunrises and sunsets every day we were there, and clear, unobstructed views of the constellations at night without the distraction of city lights.

I learned a lot in the course. Some of it was review, some was putting logic and reason to things that I was doing intuitively, and the rest was just great new information--like the loss of pixels that occurs every time you "save as" a jpg file, as well as some new tips with Adobe Photoshop Elements and some websites I hadn't heard about before. There was another learning about light that got me thinking on a whole new track beyond photography--more on that in another post.

We stayed at a century old hotel (pictured above) that was basic but lovely. Since water for the island comes from a small desalination plant and cisterns, showers were limited to twice a week. There were no electrical outlets in our room (though we had three overhead light bulbs), but fortunately we were next to the newsroom which had several. Food was decent but basic. You could get cell phone reception at the end of the porch facing the shore seven miles away, but no internet (in a way that was a relief--I realized that I spend altogether too much time on the computer lately....)

One day we went for a nature walk and I learned the fascinating history of Queen Anne's lace (right) which was brought to the island by colonists in the early 1600s. The lace was so named because the queen challenged her ladies in waiting to a crochet contest--who could create the most beautiful replica of the wild plant that grew all around them? The answer was obvious.....but what was news to me is that daucus carota, as it's known in Latin, is the forerunner of the cultivated carrot--the root of Queen Anne's lace being the wild version.

The hotel had a marvelous front porch and boardwalk to the adjacent cottages with a liberal number of cane rocking chairs. The chairs are maintained by volunteers from the shore (pictured left) who come in during the day to recane them--the salt air and wind is hard on them. One day early in our stay, I heard a woman sitting next to me proclaim with obvious satisfaction as she sat sipping a cup of tea and talking to her friend, "rocking chairs and porches are good for the soul." Amen.