Unfocus the Shitshow

When Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky became public in 1998, I had lived in the US for three years. The focus on his affair with the intern, and the following impeachment proceedings left me with my first case of culture shock, or rather, a complete lack of understanding of what was going on and why. I could not grasp why people were paying so much attention to the private life of the president. I felt that no matter what we thought of his private choices, it should not affect how we viewed his political work (which I was highly critical of). Yes, 2017’s #MeToo perspective makes me more critical of his behaviour - a man in power taking advantage of an impressionable young woman. It’s stupid, sexist, privileged and disgusting, and pretty common, as we now find out. It still doesn't make me waste thoughts on the man as a private person. I still dislike him for what he did around welfare ‘reform’, and for his failure to create a health care system back then, as well as for moving the democratic party to the neoliberal middle and paving the way for much of today’s shitty political environment.

Growing up in Western Germany, a parliamentary democracy, we learned to observe 5+ parties, policies, coalitions, strategy. All this is of course carried out by individuals. The office of the German chancellor tends to be held by one person, usually for a longer time than American presidents stay in office. Still, this important leader gets to do their private stuff privately, and is judged by what they do or don’t achieve politically. I went on to study political science, and learned more about polity, democracy, international relations, the political economy, pluralism, globalization. I always strived to understand the complexity of these systems and developments, and was never tempted to boil them down to the character of one person. Thus the ‘98 culture shock.

US society, marked by its strong individualistic culture, has turned politics into a person cult. The presidential system only reinforces this by placing a lot of (some of which, as we find out, unchecked) power into the hands of one person. The media, and we as observers of politics now attribute all power, responsibility, blame, to individuals. The cult of personality is fed by unrelenting propaganda from both political sides, and the public and private conversation degrades - today it has become largely about Trump and the people around him.

The individualist lens is applied, unfortunately, also by the electorate. Less than 20 years after Bill Clinton the person cult in American politics led straight to the election of Donald Trump. It made Bernie Sanders incredibly popular on the left, made people dislike Hillary Clinton for an array of ‘character issues’ Trump happily built his campaign on, and led all the ‘vote my conscience’ people to either stay home or vote for insignificant 3rd party candidates. The nonvoters and the 3rd party voters brought Trump to office. They reacted to person(s), and were not led by a political strategy.

As a consequence, they (and everyone else alongside them) have had to watch the Trump shitshow ever since. Trump’s tweets, the White House rumor mill and all of its reception and regurgitation in the (social) media pile up to be the most incessant, disgusting, mind numbing manifestation of the person cult to date.

I watched from over in Europe. First I was fascinated too. After the hundredth time of “I can’t believe he said that” and “ I thought it couldn't get lower than that”, about six months into it, I started losing interest, and began to filter the news for those old things that matter to me: policy, legislation, stuff that affects people’s lives. ACA, taxes, environmental protection, climate change, DACA. How much can they actually fuck up before this is over?

I focused on analyses of what this era will likely mean in the long term. Questions like, how do we contain the damage? How is the US polity holding up? What needs to change legislatively to assure that the erosion of standards is turned back and will not happen again?

The shitshow rolls on, meanwhile, the outrage on the left about each transgression, and the inevitable delighted reaction to the outrage in the Trump camp. The distraction from real issues. From the fact that the Republican party is actively working to dismantle what’s left of the economic fabric of this nation through tax and ‘entitlement’ ‘reform’. (Fortunately, they seem to have mostly lost the skills needed to create and pass legislation.) And we, along with the clown in chief, rage about kneeling athletes, whose news is more fake, and who has the bigger button. Michael Wolff’s book ‘Fire and Fury’ that came out this week tells us nothing we didn’t know about Trump. Yet we delight in the fact that now the bad guys get at each other’s throats. All media is dominated for days by this, the book selling quicker than they can print it. Can we instead please focus on what matters?

Oh, speaking of the button. The one exception I would make to the rule ‘unfocus the shitshow’ is taking a serious look at Trump’s mental health - for purposes of human survival. ‘The president is not well’ is what we hear from many concerned observers now, and increasingly, mental health professionals speak up. They are well within their ethical code which mandates them to act when an individual may cause harm to himself or others. Someone like the Germanwings pilot who took everyone on the plane with him on the suicidal flight into an alpine mountain in 2015. Somebody should have taken his pilot license away and should have provided him with help. Trump, who tweets of his power to unleash nuclear war as having the bigger and better working button, if not well, might just use that button one day (it is not a button, as we all know). So if he is sick, he needs to be removed from the job.

Apart from that, all the talks of impeachment, Article 25, etc. seem largely rhetoric to me. All these are political processes, and they will not happen as long as the Republican Party sees political benefit in keeping Trump. And, as many point out: as a consequence, we would get people in charge who are more strategic, smarter, actually read stuff, know how to pass legislation and are only slightly less creepy. People with darkness in their souls would still be ruling - without the screaming clown. I don’t like that idea.

I’d rather let Trump deal the final death blows to his long-rotting party, while we ignore all the drama. We should stop trying to convince the world that Trump is batshit nuts, unfit, devoid of morality. Anyone with half a mind knows that already. (Just forget about the leftover Trump fans.) Ignore it. Meanwhile we can do a lot more effective things than wallow in outrage. The shitshow is not only a distraction of our attention, it is a diversion of our time and our energy. And a way to deny ourselves power.

We have the power to flip the House and Senate in 2018 along with state and local governments. Support and participate in the upsurge of awesome people from all backgrounds, especially women, who are getting ready to run this year. These awesome people need your help so they can take the time to convince voters of their programs, their policies, and their values. Make politics about ideas again, not about the person.

(Thanks to Stéphane Luchini for inspiring this piece and giving me input.)

America the Sick

Berlin, October 3, 2017

These days, hearing the news from the USA is like watching a sick or injured animal writhe in agony. The brain is insane, the heart broken, the body covered in self-inflicted wounds.

People here ask me - did you know this was gonna happen? Is that why you left, came back home? But home is the US too - the familiar smells, sensations, the desert air, the towns I used to live in, the houses I bought and fixed up into homes, loved in, birthed my babies in, the friends, the work and the community. 

No, I left for other reasons. I didn’t know. I turned my back and then all hell broke loose. 

I guess that is not quite true. I knew the fish was rotting, and not just from the head. A few years ago, I read Tony Judt’s 'Ill Fares the Land', which predicts pretty much what now happens to an US society that has let go of its values and standards. Tony Judt’s dying words rang so true, and in a way contributed to me re-owning my European social democrat identity, paving the way to come ‚home‘.

Now it seems more insane, watching from a distance, probably than it feels being in it. All the attention on the clown president, outrage becoming the main political sentiment. The vitriol of social media, and non-social media reduced to reporting what social media says. My dear friends, seeking emotional shelter with each other, from learned practices, non-violence, gardening, love, travel. Others just tuning it all out, for self-preservation.

People here shake their heads, recent developments just the explosion of what they always suspected was true about US society and politics: dog eats dog, everyone for themselves, hollowed meritocracy, with no value tradition of solidarity. 

Mix in the erosion of US democracy and the amplifying function of social media, and eventually, all that brings out the evil in people, more and more people, until the whole society is so sick it starts writhing and dying. Mass shootings and the response, or lack thereof, one painful symptom of how we missed a turn a while ago and now its all downhill and speeding up.

Watching this from here, my main sentiment now, ironically and unfortunately, is a selfish one, too:  Thank not god but myself that we are out. Especially, that my children are out. 

They get to grow up exposed to values we hold dear -  solidarity, pluralism, tolerance, respect. Every parent in the US can still assure this for their kids too, but here it is not constantly contradicted by the political discussion and the economic reality. Here my children have access to education and health care without anyone going into debt. Rory and Kaya have access to state support while they build their respective start-up businesses.

There are some scary developments here too, no doubt: an extreme right wing party just entered the German parliament for the first time post-war. There is heated discussion, stupidity and meanness on social media, homelessness, shitty weather and heartless bureaucrats. But I feel safe, because the basic values seem still to be agreed upon. A cab driver I talked to recently had just thrown an elderly couple out of his cab because the man said that refugees should be gassed. 

And the kids have the added benefit of a bi-national, bi-cultural perspective on everything, maybe helping them to understand this world and their place in it. Today is the 3rd of October, the national holiday in Germany that celebrates the re-unification of the two German states. Which is a whole other topic….Ben asks: so what is this holiday today? I explain and he, thinking of the 4th of July, asks: Is there a parade or something? No parade. No display of national pride. But a society where we feel fairly safe, free and surrounded by a tolerable amount of insanity.

50: Trust and Curiosity

What a curious time in life. Those of us at the end of the baby boomer generation, we are all at this point: we have understood that our life time is finite - the limit of the time horizon is now in sight. Those of us who had kids are growing out of the parent role, the jury still being out on whether or not we managed to steer the next generation to where they need to be for themselves and for the world.

Those of us who had passions and professions are in a review period. Can we go on working this hard for another decade or more? Or maybe the economic system has changed, and our business models and value systems don’t work anymore.  But how figure out what is next, how to reinvent ourselves?

Some of us are utterly lost. What do we do after kids and without that business model? If you haven’t had kids, how do you create something that lasts beyond your time? Too late to build a house or write an opera?

And then, our parents are getting old, or sick or dying. Many of us are inheriting wealth we didn’t earn from this much more successful generation before us.  Others are sandwiched between fledgling children and aging parents, or inheriting an economic or real estate mess, apartments full of books. What if your parents became demented before you could forgive them for their screw-ups?  Now they need you and you haven’t even found the peace to love them. I am seeing it all around me.

I see a lot of desperation, sadly, especially among men.  Self-hatred. The feeling of having wasted time, either having done the same thing for too many years, or doing too many different things without real focus or depth. Unemployment,  boredom, doubt, loss, alcohol. Teenage kids glued to little screens, farther and farther from the reach of our love.  Do we still matter for anyone?

The good news: we know what we know, we know what we are able to do, and we know what we don’t want. For some of us, long-term partnerships have not survived this life phase of contemplation and change…. and we rediscover who we are just by ourselves. Not too bad. The big dream has died, but the little dreams live on.

We have 15+ years of productive time left. Enough time to do something different, learn one new thing, try one new system, change location. A few (lucky ones), manage to fill the remaining time, keep riding the same professional wave to the end, chin up, and gather applause on the way out. 

More good news: those who don’t have self-doubt, and are not lost or desperate, not on a wave petering out, actually may now reach a calm sense of positive expectation, resting on two pillars: trust and curiosity. I think, at this point in our lives, we cannot ask for more than to base our lives on a healthy mix of those two sentiments.  Trust in ourselves and in our abilities, and our judgment, and in the basic goodness of the world.  Curiosity about what gifts will come our way, and who will be there with us to enjoy them, and what we can make out of them.  

My gifts are so many now: my children, who are turning into amazing sensitive and sensible people, my parents, who get older and weirder, yet I am learning to love them and enjoy them in new ways, appreciating every minute I have with them. My work, which is ever changing and rich with learning and a team that is growing together and working in sync, in ways I didn’t even know existed.   New and old friends who provide comfort, companionship and love, and with who I can look into the darkness and into the light, as we hold and support each other. Stepping out into the night, breathing the cool air and hearing the rustle of the trees, feeling that I have had it good. 

50. I couldn’t think of a better age.

Middle Class Where Goest Thou? (A Tale of Fear or Solidarity)

My friend Ed Ward, who moved back to the US from Europe a little more than one year ago, provides his first year in review here. Like me, he is on the fence – some things are good and some things European he misses (food prices!). He is still “broke, not poor”, if a little less so. I like his motto, which he has promoted for many years, and which is an expression of hope that this state we are in is a temporary one.

As a recently turned single (-income) parent I myself have changed from very affluent to pretty strapped financially – supporting half the number of family members at this household on 20% of the former combined salary and not a single asset to call my own anymore.  A little scary at age 50. But thanks to supportive friends, family and employer, and a socio-economic system that assures health care, retirement and education (and no, it’s not free, I pay taxes and contributions for it) – thanks to all that, we manage quite well.  And we will soon start to pass on the solidarity and add a member to the household, probably a young student from a less fortunate country. So I’ll change Ed’s motto to “poor, but fortunate”.

Not everyone here feels this way. A small, but growing number of people in Germany could now be described as “still pretty fortunate, but vaguely pissed off”. Yes, Germany now has its own Tea Party! A new social movement called Pegida, which stands for patriotic citizens against the “Islamisation” of the occident. Really, the occident.  Pegida and their especially inept and shady leaders (reminds one of Sarah Palin and the likes) provide much amusement to the media, comedians and the twitter community. Yet, every Monday they meet in growing numbers (last rally had 17,000) in Dresden and now in other cities, and protest – not sure what exactly…. since foreign nationals of Islamic faith comprise something like 1.2 % of the population of that state, Sachsen. Pegida people chant “We are the people”, copying the peaceful revolutionaries of 1989 East Germany. And they march for peace - but I am not sure what kind of peace they are thinking of.  The peace of a racially homogenous society, maybe. They are a bunch of ignorant dimwits, just like the US Tea Party. But they come from the same environment of middle class fear that the Tea Party emerged from.

And they do worry the shit out of the political establishment. This week, voices from the ruling party CDU emerged, saying that the traditionally conservative CDU moved so much to the middle, to social democratic policy positions, to an open society welcoming refugees, and to embracing the EU, and as a result they have lost some of the more right wing constituents on the way. This is probably a somewhat accurate description of what happened here. Is the reaction of the CDU and the AfP (that's our new Anti-EU Party) going to be what the GOP did in the US, which is embrace the Tea Party and let it take over? I doubt it.  Of course in Germany, we worry about right wing, racist movements way more than we do in the US.

And on the US side of the fence? Tom Schimmeck, a columnist with our local paper who loves and is very familiar with the US feels after a recent visit that the spirit of the citizens has been broken – the dishwashers don’t believe the millionaire story anymore.  He says that while the economic statistics are promising, the current recovery and economic growth happens without the middle class, which is now 40% poorer than before the recession. Income inequality continues to rise, and education has become just another for-profit line of business, just like prisons and health care. (Btw- our little family is looking forward to welcoming the first educational ‘refugees’ from Silver City next fall.)

It’s true- looking at the US from this side of the fence is totally depressing these days. The persistence of structural racism evidenced by police violence and a failing justice system, the report on CIA torture and subsequent discussions, the result of the recent elections, and the loss of all the progressive enthusiasm of the first Obama years. The hope we had that policy may be about people again – health care reform about healthy people, immigration reform about hard working families –gone. Instead, corporations are now considered people and propaganda and the influence of money on policy is now considered protected free speech. And the next elections? Bush III vs. Clinton II ? Money rules.

I think living in a small, predominantly progressive community like Silver City for all these years made it easier to handle- you could always rest assured in the warm community spirit and believe that the country had not completely gone to shit, and then rant of facebook about all the bad things from a protected place. I don’t know whether this is good or bad or both.  Is it collective illusion or a supportive oasis, where we make small local improvements, when we can’t affect the big picture anymore?  

Benny, at age 10 and living again in Silver City, loves it there, but he also worries about the people in Sudan and the refugees from Syria living in Berlin. And on Christmas Eve he cries and wonders why he is so privileged and others are so poor, sick with Ebola or displaced by war. It affects him deeply, emotionally. Us socialists here in occidental Europe call that solidarity.  I am proud of my middle class global citizen son.

Alien-Nation

After a year and a half, a trip to he US was in order. I guess after being immersed in my original, European roots for this extended time, an increase in alienation with my US side of the fence was to be expected – but I didn’t think it would hit me this strongly.

Due to a last minute change in travel arrangements beyond my control, my first stop was Phoenix, AZ, a place I have always been uncomfortable in. Why is it even there? The city is a cancerous growth in the middle of the desert, wasting water on its golf courses that everyone drives to from their suburbs with their SUVs. I got to Phoenix after 20 hours on the ‘road’ jetlagged and tired, and spent another couple of hours finding the car and the hotel. There could not have been a more alienating arrival for me. There could be no stronger contrast between the organically grown, lively, messy city I live in, and the artificial, cleanly futuristic out-of-this-world ugliness of Phoenix. It was like landing on another planet.

The next day, arriving in Silver City, the first visual impression that hit me, and stayed with me through two weeks, was one of decline. Crumbling dusty streets, boarded up stores added to the sense of stagnation I got – had nothing changed? A few things did, though: The two new businesses first visible to me were the second Sonic and the second national chain drugstore, both things the need for which is not immediately apparent in a town of 9000. Much better, on second sight: the new local brew pub and music venue in the beautiful Isaac’s location and the new local community radio station, GMCR. Looks like the WNMU pool is finally getting repaired, Light Hall is a movie theater, and there will be air service to Albuquerque again. Too bad that Masa y Mas had to close, the old Javalina’s was no more, and the Wellness Coalition has lost most of its funding, including AmeriCorps.

Despite some of this good news, I felt sad and estranged, and so the next day, Benny and I headed for West Texas. I wanted to show him the beautiful Davis Mountains and the Big Bend, the area that made me first fall in love with the southwest deserts in the late 80ies. I had not been there in over 15 years. I was re-stunned by the natural beauty and peace of the area, and how being there soothes my heart and soul. Benny loved Balmorhea with its spring-fed pool and oasis-like park. We swam with the fish and the turtles and had excellent burgers at the only place open in town, a little shack called Maria’s.

The next day, after the long drive passing Fort Davis, Alpine and then south on Highway 118, we arrived in Terlingua. This little former ghost town (pop. 58) has seen quite a bit of development in recent years, both in housing and tourism, with people now making decent incomes from renting their places to visitors. Of course the old timers now complain about having visible and sometimes even audible neighbours. If this place gets crowded (ok, this would be a very subjective, desert rat interpretation of crowded), where does one go? South Brewster County, I think, is still the least populated frontier area of the US. But rural infrastructure has its perks too, not having to drive 2 hours to Alpine for everything. There is a good coffee shop, a new grocery store in Study Butte, and even a social service agency, doubling as library, clothing & food pantry and victims of violence support provider.

Speaking of violence and trauma, it has made its mark on this little community as well. The legendary ‘La Kiva’ bar and restaurant was closed after its owner was brutally murdered in early 2013, found with his head bashed in, on La Kiva’s parking lot. A local river guide is facing murder charges. The restaurant now has been purchased by a couple from up North. They are doing extensive reconstruction of the crumbling, iconic site, and will reopen later this year.

I got to spend some sweet time with a few of my old friends, hang out on the famous front porch, and we were lucky to see Butch Hancock play at the Starlight Theatre that first night. I knew most of the songs still. 

The next day, we drove into the park, down to Boquillas Canyon, and hiked into it as far as we could, past donation jars for the Mexican Singing Jesus, little bead and wired art made by kids from Boquillas and the big, raging, latte-colored waters of the Rio Grande. 

It rained on and off, and Benny got covered in fine silt mud. 

I felt much better when we headed back towards Silver City after a few days. Somehow the old familiar combination of living in Berlin and visiting the Big Bend had put things back in order for me.

My time in Silver City continued to be bitter sweet, more for personal reasons than having to do with the place – though the town has suffered. Many people there have gone through a tough year, emotionally and physically. Everyone seemed exhausted. The community is very traumatized by the loss of the three young people killed in a plane crash in May. It’s a hard place to be. But there are those who are staying, to live and grow with and beyond this tragedy, to support each other and try to turn the pain into something creative and positive. Saving the Gila River from the grasp of 1950ies policies pushed by greedy and corrupt decision-makers already has become the central fight of this decade, and I hope that the good people of Silver City are not too exhausted to continue this fight in the spirit of Ella Jazz Kirk, and for the sake of their own future.

Most of all, I learned that I have a group of strong, dear, loyal, wonderful friends there, and I need to do a better job of staying in touch with them.

My last week in the US I spent in San Francisco, back at work with my Wikimedia colleagues. We stayed at a small hotel a few blocks from Union Square. Every day, walking to work, and back, I passed hundreds of homeless people, many of them in terrible states of hunger, mental illness and physical sickness. There is a reason for the extreme homelessness here, and it’s not, as some people claim, that the city does so much for the homeless, that it is an easy ride to be one here. Just look at these people’s festering skin, smelly clothes and piles of dirt they sleep in. It’s not easy at all. They are NOT taken care of. No, the reason is: Extreme poverty is the other side of the medallion of extreme wealth. Silicon Valley and the Bay Area now are the place in the country where income inequality is the highest, and has become most visible – to a point of being in-your face with almost unbearable intensity. The average rent in SF is now $3600/month. Given my income, I would be living on the streets there. My colleagues got a tour of the facebook campus, which looks like a gigantic playground – for white rich males, who are allowed to not grow up and yet make the top wages in the country. The fact that their bosses donate a lot of money to local charities does not begin to alleviate the suffering in the streets. These impressions taken together, SF left me with a sense of an economic system out of control and a society that has become completely insane as a result. It can’t last.

The mid-term elections, while politically inconsequential, didn’t help to alleviate the picture of an America that has lost its mind and soul, and abandoned any notion of taking care of each other, or of advancing the country beyond individual enrichment.

So, for now I will return to the messy city, with its unkind inhabitants, grey skies and its cheap grocery stores. I will wear a winter coat, pay taxes, make a decent income, and be safe economically. My kids will get a free, solid education. I will continue to miss my dear friends, my Silver City family and the beautiful rivers and deserts of the southwest. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll buy a little miner’s cabin in Terlingua, contribute to the overpopulation there and spend my last days as a desert rat….

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

It's late summer in the capital of Germany. Days are getting cooler, crisp air and bright colors. We finally lost the heavy, muggy heat of the last month. First chestnuts are dropping, but the chestnut trees look sad, their leaves a crumpled brown. They’re infested with the larvae of the horse-chestnut leaf miner, and by this time of the year there’s not much green left.

I enjoy riding my bike through town, smelling all the layers of air and letting hundreds of faces and little scenes zip by. I love summers in Berlin: people actually smile, populate the streets and cafes, and there are so many bikes that it’s total anarchy on the roads.

I think, for now, I have sort of come to peace with my hometown. Many years ago, some woman, engaged with me in the standard US- “where are you from” small talk, yelled: “Yeah, of course, you HAVE to hate your hometown. “ I really did not like Berlin back then, but I wasn’t sure that had to apply to everyone and their hometowns.

So I was gone for 20 years, and I changed. I lived, and raised children, worked my butt off (but never had what they call a career), and experienced different cities and environments. I changed some more. And now that I am back, most people here with kids are now way younger than me. It feels weird, and a little sad, I didn’t get to raise my children in my native culture.

But I haven’t changed as much as my hometown did in these same years. So there’s one thing I like about getting old: History becomes a lived-in period, rather than a concept of the past. You see change, good and bad, watch developments, and you begin to distinguish the things that don’t change.

Things that have changed in Berlin:

(I left in 1994, but these changes occurred roughly since the wall came down until today, and are described from a West-Berlin perspective)

1. There is countryside around town. And it is amazing, has lots of destinations, plenty of lakes and old big rivers, beautiful old towns (all newly restored, yet appearing somewhat post-apocalyptic, since no one is ever out in the streets), and a fairly well built-out road system. When I grew up, there was one area within the Wall that was an agricultural field, with a little bit of a sense of open space. That was it. Now you drive 20 minutes any direction and you are in rural Brandenburg. It has not ceased to amaze me. (of course this is totally old news to anyone who’s been here the last 20 years). 
2. Berlin has become an international, diverse city. Back then, West-Berlin was a pretty homogenous, provincial little place, its people wearing this snooty, overblown self-perception of being a unique subculture. Now there is not much difference to London, Paris, Prague or Copenhagen: Lots of people from all over the world, residents and tourists. In between, you can spot the occasional old disgruntled Berliner, not quite grasping what the fuck happened.
3. There now is genuine economic development, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. When I grew up here, West-Berlin was sustained by economic subsidies, to keep it alive while being geographically isolated. Today, there is much real wealth, a strong middle class, a thriving IT start-up scene, and some signs of social innovation, neighborhood projects, alternative economic models, the arts…. even some humor: The building that houses the association of German foundations, located at the former checkpoint Charlie, reads in big letters: ‘You are now entering the Nonprofit Sector’.
4. There are SUVs and leaf blowers. Anyone who buys an SUV in Berlin is by definition a complete idiot. Streets are way to narrow, there’s no parking, and gas is around 4 Euros/Gallon. Leaf blowers are idiotic too, anywhere.
5. About 50% of people employed today in the service industry attended a professional development training at some point that included a PPT slide titled: Be Nice to Your Customer. The other 50% are still treating you like a nuisance. When I grew up, all waiters were nasty. Still today, about 90% of wait staff in Berlin completely forget about you after they have delivered your food, and you have to wave our arms around and holler to get their attention in order to pay the check.

Things that haven’t changed:

1. Berliner Schnauze: This is the term that describes the big mouth of the Berliner, always quick and ready to educate you, make sure you look stupid for asking a question, and to appear completely unhelpful. Everyone has dozens of stories on this. It also inevitably happens when you get back to town from somewhere more friendly, as if they know to catch you at your most off-guard and vulnerable. I got back from London a few days ago, and asked a security guard at the airport: ‘Where does the bus into town take off from?’ He goes, sarcastically: “ From the bus station. ” Long pause, him enjoying the moment. Then the directions follow.….Ha. Ha. Ha.
2. There is an extension of this, when Schnauze turns into passive aggressive behavior. Like one recent Sunday morning, when one of my neighbors pulled his car down the driveway next to the house, to load it up for his vacation. When he was done, somebody had locked the gate, which never gets locked, with a special key. To make the point that you shouldn’t bring your vehicle on the property. Funny and sweet though, when all the other neighbors came down in their pajamas and robes, all working together to unlock the thing.
3. The sidewalk pave stones. These are a visual of my childhood, and it's comforting that they continue to be there. Although the public works department could do a better job at preserving the 150 year old color schemes in our neighborhood.
   
4.  Most of downtown West-Berlin has been fixed up now too (after the East part of town was finished), but a few pockets of post war West-Berlin ugliness remain, including Hardenbergplatz, the big square between the Zoo train station and the Zoo.
5. Winters? The jury is still out on those.

A few days later, as I finish writing this post, it has gotten significantly colder. I walked the dogs around Schlachtensee, and now I feel tired, just from the extra work my body has to do to stay warm. I hope we get a few more weeks of summer before it gets nasty, and we move into our second winter here. The harsh, long gray Berlin winters – they were one of the main reasons I left.

Or, hey, maybe it won’t get nasty….Last fall was beautiful here, and last winter was really not bad at all. So I am hoping for the perks of global warming. My newfound hometown peace could get significantly disrupted by six months of wet gray subzero horror, combined with grumpy Berliners in SUVs. Stay tuned.

Surrogate Mothers and Citizens of the World

I am happy to report the passport saga has come to a happy ending.

For those of you who don’t know: I have been working on getting my three children German passports for 14 months now.  They entered Germany with their US passports. Ruby and Rory are scheduled to leave and spend the summer in Silver City on July 10.  If they were to exit Germany with the US passports, and no proof of German citizenship,  they would get arrested for overstaying their visas. And not be able to return to Germany.

So we needed the German passports. This was not even an immigration or citizenship issue: The kids have German citizenship by being children of a German mother. No, I thought, it was a bureaucracy issue.  Or was it?

The sequence of emails between myself, the consulate in Houston and the Buergeramt (citizen’s service office) in Berlin-Steglitz spans a year, and if printed would circumvent the globe. The main hurdle: before issuing documents to Germans born in a foreign country, the issuing office has to receive the ok from the German consulate in the country of birth. I did not understand why until the very end of the ordeal. The reason is creepy.

I don’t want to bore the reader with details, but the barriers to receiving passports where a mix of bureaucracy and incompetence, and included

• No response to the letter of inquiry from Steglitz to Houston
• Steglitz refusal to follow-up with looking into why there was no response
• No response for a month from Houston to my phone and email messages
• Steglitz resending the inquiry via email to a mistyped email Houston email address
• Houston requesting “long” birth certificates, stating the town of birth (which Texas issues upon request, and NM doesn’t issue unless you bribe someone)
• Benny’s midwife’s basement having flooded a few years back, turning all records into pulp
•  City of Austin demanding a utility bill to verify identity of me requesting my kids’ birth certificates

Once we received the long birth certificates in the mail, mailed them to Berlin, pdf-ed them back to Houston, and after another nail biting ten days passed (the day of the kids’ departure now three weeks away) because the head of the passport office was on vacation, she finally sent this email to Steglitz:

Anhand des Schreibens der Hebamme für Ben Alfero und des Wohnsitzes der Eltern im Ort der Geburt laut der Geburtsurkunden für Rory Gregory und Ruby Zeuner, ist eine Leihmutterschaft hier  unwahrscheinlich. Hinweise auf eine Leihmutterschaft oder ähnliches kann ich hier nicht erkennen.

Ein positives Votum gemäß den vorläufigen Durchführungshinweisen des Bundesministeriums des Innern wird hiermit abgegeben.

Non-German speakers, this says: you can give these kids passports now, because there is no evidence of them being born to a surrogate mother... What????

So this is what this bureaucratic nightmare was about. Since surrogate mother deals are less regulated in the US, the German state needs to make sure my kids are actually, genetically, heretically, biologically, (to not say racially) German and not the product of a fertilized non-German egg planted into my German womb.  And this is what caused a year of trouble, hundreds of dollars in fees and mailing costs, and a bunch of gray hair. It had to be German blood in their veins. Creepy.

Whatever. My kids now have EU Passports and dual citizenship (or rather, they had it all along, but now the bureaucrats had to admit it).

So meanwhile, the block my dad lives on in Berlin Kreuzberg erupts in chaos. 40 asylum-seeking refugees from Africa have refused to leave the school on Ohlauer Strasse they had been occupying for over a year. Their asylum applications are not looking promising, and they are facing deportation back to war zones. These guys are on the roof of the building, threatening to jump. They have very little to lose.  1000 police have blocked the entire area, to prevent more people from joining them. Then the Kreuzberg authorities order the school to be cleared. But the police is smarter than the politicians and waits. Many people, including my parents and my sister, sign this petition, supporters are doing sit-ins and demonstrations in the streets right outside of my dad’s balcony.  He can only get into his building showing his ID.  The #ohlauer tweets come 3-4 a minute.

On Wednesday, my dad escapes to our quiet Steglitz and has dinner with us at the Greek place on the corner. He seems harrowed and tired, discouraged by the constant violence he sees outside his window. I offer him political asylum in Steglitz for a few nights. But that night as he gets home, an agreement is reached between the occupiers and the Kreuzberg government. The barricades are removed and everyone goes home. The refugees get to stay in the school, and their other demands will be looked at later. The agreement seems really non-committal, badly written, and anti-climactic, after this week of trauma and violence.

This shitstorm showed once again:  German asylum law, and the bureaucratic system it has created, are not working as a whole and are not doing justice to the individuals stuck in the process.  The whole thing is completely dysfunctional, outdated, designed for a world in which war, political prosecution and human rights violations that happen elsewhere did not concern us in the rich countries. “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar”, untouchable human dignity, says Article 1 of the German constitution. That should define the German nation.  Not blood. Yet that antiquated notion of nationality is at the heart of what keeps us from reforming our asylum process.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, it’s the Fourth of July, which President Obama marks by attending a naturalization ceremony, …. and taking the opportunity to remind the nation that US immigration reform has still not happened. The American notion of citizenship, based on shared values, in the President’s words, “adherence to a set of beliefs, and unalienable rights, and obligations to each other, to look after each other and serve one another” makes a lot more sense than the Germans’ in today’s ethnically intermixed world.

Yet the US Congress cannot or is not willing to pass reforms that assure human dignity, keep families together and create a system that works for people and the economy. 50,000 unaccompanied children from Central America have crossed into Texas alone (of all places) since October. Fifty Thousand.  A few hundred were sent to California for processing, and met by angry protesters, shouting “Send them back!”

My children are privileged. Even though it was a pain in the ass, they now have two passports. Through pure luck they are citizens of a country that grants citizenship based on blood and of another country that grants it based on place of birth. But does that really make them citizens of the world? Both passports were issued by wealthy nations with democratic political systems and lots of opportunity. Both nations are democracies that have not figured out how to change policy and how to address the incoming tide of the poor, prosecuted, opportunity-seeking humans that surround us – address it politically, economically, legally and humanely.  It’s the next big challenge for us.  When we figure it out we’ll be true citizens of the world.

One Year and Counting

When you are part of the global tribe, when you are familiar and at home in more than one culture, people ask a lot of questions: So what is this like for you? ….What do you miss most?.... How are the kids doing?....Is it weird to be back?.... there are never short answers. And I can’t help but constantly update this running pro and con table in my head, hunting for the never-to-be-found answer to the question: what is the better side of the fence?

We have been in Berlin for one year this month. June 11, 2013 was the day we left Silver City, NM.  Since I don’t believe in bearing my soul on the Internet, the rougher personal and emotional aspects of our move won’t be discussed here. This blog is about culture, politics, society, and economics, and how those relate to our lives, of course, personally.  I will try a snapshot of what we learned this year.

It is weird to be back. Until now, I had this rule in my life: Never go back to a place you have already been. I am not sure why, but it just wasn’t something I did. I always moved forward. Just breaking that rule in itself is weird and new.  Back to GO, the place of origin.

What helped was that Berlin is probably one of the places in the world that has changed the most radically over the last 20 years. If not the most changed place of all – in terms of the built environment and the culture, mostly. This is of course even more true if one is from East-Berlin. “Ossis” also changed political and economic systems. “Wessis” just had the fact changed that there was a wall around the place and that we were a small, provincial, over-subsidized pool of standing water with a high opinion of our subculture status, not really part of West-Germany, and certainly not part of the surrounding geography. Now Berlin is a full-blown European and global metropolis with most of the advantages, and a growing set of disadvantages, mainly rising cost of housing. But it is still cheaper to live here than in any other city in Germany, and way cheaper than in London or Paris.

So it wasn’t really like going back. It was going to a new place, with a lot of familiar cultural stuff, and the old West-Berlin neighborhoods looking largely the same.

There were a lot of unknowns when we first got here. Would the kids be able to manage school? Would I find a job in this tight job market? What’s the nonprofit sector like here? Would we survive a Berlin winter?  Would my friends remember me?

Most of these questions have been partially answered after one year.  The winter wasn’t so harsh, some friends turned out to be friends and others have moved on.  Engaging in the joy and labor of gently reconnecting with some of them, with their new 20-years later selves. The nonprofit sector has a slightly different role here and sits in a different environment. The German nonprofits themselves feel like very familiar territory. And I have found a job, and it has brought me the level-up in professionalism and challenge that I had wished for, for many years.

One thing I have learned: If I make assumptions about my children, they are probably going to be wrong.  All three have proven that this year, in different ways. From a parenting perspective, this has probably been the hardest year of my life, the most challenging and puzzling, frustrating year, taking me to an unknown edge I didn’t know existed: the point of not knowing how to handle a situation or behavior. And at the same time, my children have made it the most rewarding and reassuring year:  I have seen my older kids grow more into themselves, take the challenge of the new environment, deal with their loss and grief caused by moving. All of them have widened their horizon, their perspective, their relationships and have learned a lot – mostly not in school. None of them have done what and how I expected them to do 12 months ago.

What do I miss most? Of course my husband, and my oldest daughter. My husband.... lover, partner, co-parent.  Then the people of Silver City, and the few close friends I had.  Our spring break trip to Mexico.  Mexican food, sometimes. The Gila River. Our beautiful house. The Tour of the Gila.

What do I appreciate most here? My family (parents, sister, cousin) close by and spending time with them on a regular basis. My family. And then, my family. A few good friends. Being able to go to a movie and concerts, theater. The beauty of Berlin, its parks and lakes and its surroundings, much of which we have yet to explore. Being able to drive to Italy in a day. Living in a buzzling, global, diverse city with interesting politics and always something new going on. My kids being part of an international community at their school. The wild life in our backyard, and its giant old trees swaying in the wind at night. How cheap everything is.  That this is now part of Europe, which is a whole new perspective. My neighbor, who is nice and weird and feeds our cats when we are gone. And a socio-economic system that is still based on solidarity, even though it’s being whittled away, but the idea is still that you should be able to live your life not being in constant terror about paying for healthcare, child care, education, transportation, and that it is ok to pay taxes for this.

So for now, from this perspective of politics, culture, education, economics….this is the better side of the fence for us – but only if our family becomes complete again.