I've Loved You So Long

In these troubling times, we often prefer to divert our attention to suffering that is worthy of our time. So we track down stories about Africa, India, South Asia, the Middle East, and the urban slums of America to distract us from our own worries: the stock market, the size of the loss in our retirement fund now that there are so few fixed-benefit pensions around, whether our children will ever get decent jobs paying them living wages, will there be water to drink, air to breathe.

My cousin came out to visit yesterday. She is a few years older than I am and despite a difficult life--her mother died when she was eight years old after a long, five year bout with cancer, her father married a woman who insisted that she forget the family that was and pretend that her stepmother was indeed her biological mother and thus abandon her connections with her original family, she created an admirable life for herself. She married the first boy who liked her so that she could get out of the house. She finished college, she had a baby whom she adored and raised to be a gem of a man, she got a master's degree, and when she decided to leave her husband, she left with the ability to make a living for herself.

There isn't an ounce of self pity in my cousin's body. It just isn't permitted genetically. We share a grandmother and believe me, self-pity wasn't part of the family legacy. My cousin is tough.

But she is feeling blue. She had a plan: sell her second house in the Catskills, retire from her lucrative advertising job, sell her appreciated coop on the East Side, and move to the West Coast to be close to her married son, his wife, and their two children.

Then the stock market crashed. So she can't sell her second home, her 401(k) has tanked, and her one bedroom coop is unsaleable. She can't retire. At least for now.

It was in that frame of mind that we decided to see "I've Loved You So Long," by Phillippe Claudel, a French film, yes, there are subtitles, but having just returned from Europe, we can no longer isolate ourselves from other languages. Kristen Scott Thomas plays Juliette, just released from prison, who is reunited with her younger sister Lea played by Elsa Zylberstein, after fifteen years. This is a slow, human story about how sisters reconnect. Everyone, the probation officer and the social worker, reminds Juliette how lucky she is to have a family to return to after being in prison. But her silence, her coping mechanisms, her way of surviving not just imprisonment, but the crime she has committed become the elements of the plot of this slow, agonizing film about how hard it is to be around humans, and how secrets make these connections between us impossible.

This film has hope. It's not all despairing, and certainly Kristen Scott Thomas will be up for an Academy Award nomination for best actress. See it with someone with whom you want to have a deeply personal conversation afterwards. I did with my cousin, and it brought us closer together so that her disappointment that her plans had caved, and my general neurotic nature, blended into the human touch that we long for from family. Coincidentally, that is what this film is about, too.

The Symantics of Fear

Having been in the Czech Republic when the Mumbai attacks began, I watched BBC World and CNN International, which blathered hour after hour with rumors and unconfirmed reports to fill up air time. Perhaps it was the European accents that made their reporting a bit less hysterical than what we have come up against upon our return home.

But I expect more from NPR, National Public Radio. Saturday morning, Juan Williams, not my favorite conservative African American news analyst, was filling in for Daniel Schorr, one of the best. Williams spoke about "the terrorists" generically, as if all of the attacks in all of the countries across the planet have been coordinated by one organization. That assumption is wrong; there are dissatisfied people in every country and the more unstable a country's economic, social, and political system, the more likely it is that there will be civil unrest. However, to imply that all of these discontents are connected is reminiscent of the "Red Scares" of the 1930s and 1950s. Rebels are notoriously isolated, because they are forced into hiding. Every discontent is not Al Qaeda.

This assumption that there is a singular enemy merely accelerates fear and makes repression by governments not just feasible but acceptable. Remember what Bush-Cheney got away with post-911? Considering that George Washington set the precedent for "no torture" of captured British soldiers and Tories, it saddened all of us who believe in American ideals that the President, Vice President, and Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department were spending their time justifying the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques on human beings captured as suspects in the amorphous "war on terror."

There is no such thing as "we" and "them." Our way to make the world safer is not to create false enemies, but to understand how we are connected, what we need for dignified and sustainable lives.

On Being Trampled to Death at Wal-Mart in Valley Stream

Arriving home is never easy after a long trip to another culture. With the machine gun blasts still reverberating from the Mumbai attacks when we got off the plane at JFK yesterday afternoon, we were startled to learn that Jdimytai Damour, 34, an employee at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY, was killed when 2,000 maniacal customers pushed through the doors on Black Friday, impatient and murderous to begin their holiday shopping before dawn.

How can this be?

We have become a nation of consumers, desperate to shop. With unemployment at an historic high, insecurity in the very bowels of American business--banking, automobile, publishing, media, even computers and software--, and foreclosures of family homes as well as rental apartments because of irresponsible lending to landlords, this identity is threatened, turning ordinary people into monsters, uncaring monsters. I grew up in the town next to Valley Stream. The area was once solidly working and middle class, nothing fancy, many first generation home owners, with their children being the first to attend college. The people who live there now are more vulnerable, perhaps having bought houses they couldn't quite afford, lured by fast and easy credit; perhaps their jobs are on the line; perhaps they see their futures and their children's futures diminishing.

Having just returned from the Czech Republic where ordinary people became monsters during the Nazi occupation, I am not surprised. We all have this potential inside us. This isn't a matter of "them" and "us." This is a matter of "we."

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink about how people become hardened to suffering when they are in a rush. People don't stop to help other people when they are late. Inside our brains we make an evaluation of what is more important: ourselves and our lives or that of a suffering stranger. So the desperation that filled the anxious crowd waiting to confirm their identities as consumers made each individual callous, reinforced by the crowd. That's what happens to human beings.

That's not what happens to monsters. This is what happens to human beings.

Coming Home

After a walking tour of Old Town, including the Municipal Palace and the Cubist House of the Black Madonna, we dressed and celebrated Thanksgiving at Villa Richter, at the far side of Prague Castle. This meal was up there as one of the best I've ever eaten. The chef de cuisine is Petr Hajny, he is very young, doesn't speak any English, but has a future. Watch for his name! The restaurant is in a remodeled vineyard that was part of the St. Wenceslas Vineyard and has only recently been reopened. Grapes have been grown here since 1375, and like many properties in the Czech Republic, this one was confiscated after the Second World War because it was owned by German nationals, then used for government offices by the Communists. The Czech government began restoration in the 1990s.

The views are magnificent, the restaurant is quiet and divided into several rooms which assured privacy, and the food was delicate, complex, aesthetically pleasing, and perfectly plated. I started with a fresh crab salad served with corn mousse that was light and flavorful as well as complex in the textures of the strings of crab against the smoothness of the mousse. Others had the veal cheeks with a stock reduction that was velvety and intense. For the main dish I had turbot with a celery cream on top that was light yet richly infused with the taste of celery. My husband had pork belly with another completely different stock reduction, other folks had duck and monk fish.

The restaurant has various cousins on the property that are open during the high season, but this elegant and expensive place should be reserved for high holidays like Thanksgiving and romantic anniversaries.

After a week in Prague I knew I didn't really know the city well. It was only as we were leaving that we drove through the Soviet-era styled apartment complexes where poor and working people live. Although that section of town is clean, it clearly is poor, without any of the aesthetics of Old Town or New Town. There aren't any stores nearby either, making living there more difficult without immediate access to grocery stores and the wares of daily life.

Prague has a public transportation system--Metro, Trams, and buses--that operates on a near honor system. One purchases a ticket and without going through a turn stile, one enters the Metro, Tram, or bus without ever having to show it. There are machines to run the ticket through on the way into the Metro and on the Trams and buses, but there is no one to assure that no one is getting a free ride. Imagine that working in New York!

It is not easy to get to know a Czech person. The only real contact we had was with Ivana, our knowledgeable guide who took us to Terezin, the Jewish Quarter, and on our last day's walking tour. She attended university during Communism and spoke with some hesitation about her life as it has changed so radically over the last twenty years. I met an Israeli man who has lived in Prague for seven years and loved it better before it became so cosmopolitan, so sophisticated. He liked it better when it was a hidden gem.

Of course, the last two days were consumed with images of the seiges in Mumbai where unknown gunmen attacked two hotels, the train station, a Chabad, a hospital, and several other locations. We understood how safe we felt in Prague. There is little visible security, some armed police patroling, but no army presence anywhere near the city or the airport.

Nine hours in the air and now I'm home, doing laundry, delivering clothing to the dry cleaners, going through the piles of mail, and longing for the next adventure.

The Muller Villa

Adolf Loos was an architect with important influence at the turn of the twentieth century. He insisted on using only the highest quality materials, and scorned all ornamentation on the exteriors of his buildings. His most significant works are in Vienna, Prague, Pilsen, and Paris.

Late in his career, in 1928-1930, he designed a home for the contractor-builder, Franrisek Muller, his wife, and daughter, the Muller Villa. The house construction was totally controlled by Loos. And once the family moved in, if he hadn't taken so ill, he would have controlled every aspect of the interior usage of the home. Although austere on the outside, merely a concrete box, once inside the richness of the materials shows through, even now almost eighty years later. The original heating system still works, the wall paper is original, all of the wood paneling is, as are the tiles. Loos insisted on placing the house on its site despite the fact that Muller preferred another location. However, it has some of the best views of Prague.

Because Muller was an amateur photographer, the extensive restoration was done according to a vast collection of photographs that included the artwork (which was sold during the Community years by the widow to support herself and her daughter), furniture, and culinery accessories.

The Muller Villa was confiscated after the Communist takeover in 1948, where the family continued to live. After the death of her parents, the daughter moved to Canada, and after the Velvet Revolution which began in 1989, the home was sold to the City of Prague as a museum.

At the time it was built, Prague would not allow homes beyond a second story. Loos bent the rules by constructing the house around a spiral so that each room, and there are twelve of them, are arranged a few steps above the last around a central stairway and a rear one. The public living room has a ladies' sitting room and the dining room overlooking it, all of which are quite austere in decoration, but not in the marble and wood panels that become the atmosphere of the rooms. There are few light fixtures, as Loos built with windows to provide natural light for as long as possible during the day. We were not allowed to take photographs, but here is a great site to see the interiors.

Loos also disapproved of servants living in the house. So he created the rooms without servants' quarters and only a single full bathroom. There is a toilet in the kitchen and a sink in the nursery. That was it! The living quarters for the family are far less ornate. The dressing rooms for Mr. and Mrs. Muller were designed to their exact measurements for their shoes, for sitting at their dressing tables.

We had a private tour of the house with a lovely and very knowledgeable young woman. It's finally warmer today, a bit of sun, too. As we looked out from the terrace of the Muller Villa, we saw where Prague's poor live: there are two enormous locations of Society style apartment complexes, looking remarkably like American urban housing projects. They are located quite a distance from Prague's Center, but are located on hills on the outskirts of town.

What Obama's Election Means To One Voter and La Boheme

In just these last few weeks, we have experienced some of what an Obama administration will feel like, and so far, his intelligence, wit, strategic thinking, and desire to surround himself with the best and brightest, continue to provoke a sense of optimism and hope. Yes, it looks a bit like what it would have been if there had been a Clinton III, but these press conferences convey a very different attitude towards the press and consequently to the American people and people of the world. Who said Barack Hussein Obama doesn't have a sense of humor?

Here is an email I received from a nonagenarian—that means he is over ninety—African American attorney with whom I worked at Legal Aid Society back in 1973, and with whom I've stayed connected through jazz piano (not mine, but his incredible talent):

I don't know anybody who wasn't for Obama, even though I am kind of boxed in these days as a nonagenarian with impaired mobility. I can't describe the feeling I had when I realized he had won as I woke up from napping. It is the most significant election of my lifetime. I thought of all the humiliations and segregation I had experienced during the early part of New York life and here and now this man had become president of the United States!

I am doing fairly well these days and someone has asked me to accompany them to the inauguration if the tickets she has been promised materialize. There is also one for my son. Soooo… . We have that to look forward to. That weekend is also my birthday weekend as well as Martin Luther King's. If all this comes out right, it should be quite a time for me.

More from Prague: Last night we attended a performance of La Boheme at the State Theater in Prague. The building is not just baroque, it is the epitomy of baroque: statues hold up the individual boxes that rise from the orchestra section, the pit, where we were seated; cupids and cherubs all about; a painted ceiling; crystal chandeliers; and gilting everywhere. The stage is much small than the Metropolitan's in New York City, and none of the performers was using a microphone hidden in his or her hair.

This version of La Boheme was shortened into two acts from four and didn't have the gravity of an American production. The performance was entertainment not grand culture, as originally intended! This is a play about four young men--a poet, a painter, a philosopher, and a musician--living in Paris poor and living hand to mouth precariously in search of their talent and great art. Two of the men seek love; two of the men prefer to live without it. The poet, Rodolpho, and the painter, Marcello, need muses and they arrive in the form of Mimi and Musetta.

The grand recognizable arias of the first act brought tears to my eyes. The closing scene when Mimi dies, well, just being at the opera reminds me of my grandfather. He told the stories of the great tragedies as if they were his own stories. So whenever I go to the opera, I feel this connection to him; I adored this elegant and European man who never left the house without a tie and a hat. Now I realize that he told us these stories, complete with him humming the arias as a way of avoiding telling us much about himself. After he died, my father discovered that he had arrived in the United States under an assumed name, so I wonder now whether he left a wife and children in Roumania about whom he never spoke. We might never know.

The feel of the performance was more like Rent or Moulin Rouge than anything I've ever seen at either the New York or San Francisco operas.

After dinner we had dinner at Pravda, serving a menu from around the world. Two of our group had a chicken curry from Africa, I had a roasted halibut over spinach cannelloni, my daughter ordered a French duck breast with blood orange sauce, another ordered a Japanese tuna, a steak, and a black seafood risotto. Elegant, spectacularly plated and presented, and with live music provided by two guitarists. The first number they performed was the Frank Sinatra classic "My Way" performed in Czech.

We haven't had a bad meal in all of Prague.

Cafe Louvre

We wandered through the branch of the National Gallery dedicated to the decorative arts: glass, porcelain, clocks, silver, costumes, and pewter. The craft of the Czech people is well developed and elegant. The workmanship since way before the Hapsburgs arrived is humbling: watches with jewels, inlaid furniture, hammered silver. Czech glass is sensational: delicate, etched, colored, some pieces from the fourth century look absolutely modern. This branch of the museum is housed in a palace, like each of the six National Galleries, just a few blocks from our hotel. Then we walked through Old Town Square to the Cafe Louvre.

Opened in the first years of the twentieth century, the Cafe Louvre has had such notable guests as Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein. The food was delicious, although the thick smoke permeated my hair, clothes, shoes, coat. All of me. I had a thick vegetable soup, fresh bread, and a light Moravian white wine. The local white wines are quite lovely and delicate. The reds are mostly imported.

There is no hysteria here. Life is very calm, even in the heart of downtown on a business day. America is too new. It's too young and keeps itself immature, prides itself in its self-centered adolescent essence. Watching BBC World and even CNN here, one doesn't have the sense that every minute is urgent, that every word is essential, that every decision is precipitous.

Is it because there is so much more history here? The aristocracy were all nuts, all of that intermarriage, and of course, incest. Despite their magnificent palaces, riches beyond belief, intricate laces and brocades, jewels and crowns, vestments and holy objects, the rulers here were caught up in dramas that probably make our American brand of hysteria look quite tame.

The Velvet Revolution

Back in 1968 I had a cat named "Mrs. Alexander Dubcek," referring to the leader of then Czechoslovakia who led the country through the economic and political reforms that ended with the Russian invasion. On the night of August 20, 1968, Soviet, Hungarian, Bulgarian, East German, and Polish troops invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Government immediately declared that the troops had not been invited into the country and that their invasion was a violation of socialist principles, international law, and the UN Charter.

Despite the protests, the Czechoslovak reformers were forcibly and secretly taken to the Soviet Union where they were compelled to sign a treaty that provided for the "temporary stationing" of an unspecified number of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Alexander Dubcek was removed as party First Secretary on April 17, 1969. Later, Dubcek and many of his allies within the party were stripped of their party positions in a purge that lasted until 1971 and reduced party membership by almost one-third.

Perhaps it was this purge of the Communist Party that allowed for the remarkable transformation of the country of Czechoslovakia into the states of Czech and Slovania just twenty years later. The Czech Republic's prosperity is amazing. The Velvet Revolution at the fall of the Soviet Empire began in 1989. How did this country move from Communism to capitalism so quickly, with so few casualties, especially since it split into two upon release from the Soviet hold? Was it because the country was led by the poet and playwright, Vaclav Havel, elected in the first free elections here in June 1990?

Perhaps, like Paris, the city of Prague is just too expensive for poor people, all of whom now live in the suburbs. But when we drove out to Terezin the other day we didn't see any poverty.

Last night we wandered through New Town, filled with spacious apartments, a casino on every corner (yet according to my daughter, they remain empty), shops filled with European and Czech merchandise, restaurants, and bars. The streets are safe; there is virtually no street crime except for pickpocketing, and that is limited to tourist areas. Every restaurant was filled last night; it was Tuesday. Reservations are a must.

No begging, no homelessness, no poverty. We took the Metro at 10:00 at night. It was clean, crowded with passengers, quiet, and cheap. It was $1 a ride to anywhere in the city. No homeless were hovering in corners to keep warm. No trash on the floors.

How does the Czech Republic do it? Manufacturing! Did you hear that W? Did you hear that Paulsen?

The Czech Republic has a well-educated population and a well-developed infrastructure of roads and public transportation.

The principal industries are motor vehicles, machine-building, iron and steel production, metalworking, chemicals, electronics, transportation equipment, textiles, glass, brewing, china, ceramics, and pharmaceuticals. The main agricultural products are sugar beets, fodder roots, potatoes, wheat, and hops.

The Jewish Quarter

Only 1500 Czech Jews survived long enough to receive reparations from the Czech and German governments after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Originally there had been 180,000 Jews living here before the country was chopped up and fed to Germany with the hope that this would be the last conquest not the first of many.

157,000 Jews were transported through Terezin, not all Czech, most died. Now the Czech Republic has fewer than 5000 Jewish people living here, mostly in Prague. It is a Catholic country with a church on every corner. It is a Catholic country with a history of hostility towards the Jews who have been a part of this nation since the 10th century. The oldest remaining synagogue in Europe is here in Prague, dating from the 13th century.

The Jewish Quarter is now the most fashionable section of Prague with all of the boutique shops and fancy restaurants located on its border. Once a ghetto, once the only place where Jews could live, under Joseph II finally the wealthier Jews were allowed to leave, and the area filled up with the very poorest: the Orthodox Jews and the poor Christians. The Quarter was destroyed because of fire and disease and rebuilt, and now, after the Nazis were defeated, after the Communists were defeated, the Quarter is fashionable and a tourist destination. There is the Jewish cemetery, and various synagogues, some still in use, others converted to museums.

Oddly the Czechs convinced the German occupiers to allow them to collect the artifacts from the over 150 Jewish communities around Czechoslovakia and horde them in Prague. The original intention of the Nazis was to store the artifacts for an exhibit they would soon launch to illustrate the annihilated species. Thankfully it didn't work and the remains, including old Torahs, silver plates and cups, sofars, and books, are now collected and maintained by the Jewish Museum.

It was the Pinkas Synagogue that touched me. The interiors are covered with the names of the 80,000 Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Simple black lettering, family names not repeated. I found my last name. My husband found his, too. Our friends are not Jewish and they watched our eyes fill up with tears, as we realized that aunts and uncles, cousins we never knew, died this horrible death of exile, confinement, dehumanization, and starvation.

I wandered through the city afterwards wondering how a city's history is so intrinsically connected to its anti-Semitism, how a city's legacy has such a rich vein of shame driven through it. And then I looked up and saw this decoration on a building, only constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but obviously recently restored. If you can't see it clearly, it shows a Star of David, a Jewish man's face in profile with a hooked nose, a woman's profile. But next to the Star of David is a pile of money! I saw this and wondered how it must feel to live here, being Jewish, and wondering what remains alive of this history in the blood of my neighbors.

Terezin--Pretending It Isn't So

Terezin was a garrison town built in the 18th century about an hour outside of Prague by Joseph II and named after his mother. We drove through a magnificent countryside, rich farmlands, only occasionally spotted with chemical plants. There are no Soviet styled cement buildings on the way. Picturesque.

It was a cold, bleak, gray day with scattered snow fall on the ground when we arrived at the Small Fort. This is where the political prisoners were kept by the Nazis. This fortress was so utterly stark: the solitary confinement cells were tiny, bare walls, no graffiti, no long poems etched into the endless gray. The barracks that held as many as 200 men, well, the only comfort was how tightly they were crammed in with each other, at least keeping each other warm. Nothing grew anyplace. It was barren.

We walked out to the meadows, passed a gallows, to the wall where political prisoners, those who resisted the Nazis, were shot by firing squads. We walked to the cemetery, where Russian soldiers who died in World War I are buried, where Jews are buried, where political prisoners are buried, some in individual graves, others in mass graves. Their bones turned to ash once the crematorium opened.

And we walked into a crematorium. It was horrifying. To see the evidence of the evil of human beings, to see how mechanized killing became. There is a smell throughout Terezin, it is the smell of death, unnatural death. My way of coping with the overwhelming feeling of despair, the cold, dank day, was to find an aesthetic with my camera, to find the beauty in the gas nozzles that fed the flames in the crematorium.

Then we went into the town of Terezin itself. This was taken over and made into a Jewish ghetto, mostly for older Jews transported into the town from all over Europe. What had been a garrison town, became a hell hole where every possible space was turned into a place to live. It didn't look as horrible as the small fort, because there are trees and open spaces, and a city square. But Terezin was used by the Germans to trick the International Red Cross into believing that the Nazis weren't treating Jews cruelly. We sat through a propaganda film produced by one of Germany's finest actors: a soccer game played by healthy men with happy children watching in admiration, women chatting over window sills, young lovers walking hand in hand. The Red Cross visited and issued a report in 1944 that all was well.

There is a Museum that has the artifacts of daily life on display--poetry, dolls, journals, drawings, paintings--and oral histories of survivors "One day a transport of children arrived in Terezin. It was so lovely to hear their voices. And then one day, they all disappeared." The artwork of the children is especially touching, because it is innocent and still reeks from hope. We had already heard the name of the transport, the number of people shipped to the camps, and the number of survivors: 1076 sent to Auschwitz, 34 survived; 798 sent to Dachau, none survived. Numb. I felt numb, as if the evil was too inconceivable to fully understand despite all of my years of fascination with this time in history. Being there, it was so real that it felt unreal.

Just about ten years ago, a clandestine synagogue was revealed in the back of a house. The chapel had been used secretly to perform funeral services. We stood in this tiny room with prayers of hope painted on the walls. I could not imagine having that much faith in God to sing his praises when life was so full of death, hatred, and fear.

Our guide told us that a woman had opened a kosher restaurant in Terezin, hoping that all of the Jewish tourists would enjoy the respite. But one is so consumed by the history that food is unimaginable, any comfort is, and the restaurant soon closed. We drove silently back to Prague.

The evil of the Nazis and the Holocaust should not be inconceivable, because if we don't recognize our capacity for evil, it lurks inside each of us, Hitler was not a freak, then it can happen again. And it is: in Darfur, in the former Congo, in any place where a primary identity is the only identity. When we as humans cannot see the commonality of being human.

Another Magnificent Meal

I had no expectations that the food in Prague would be so delicious. I don't eat meat, and figured I would be despondent for fish or vegetables, forced to choose among the lesser items on menus dominated by beef and pork. But every meal, from breakfast at the Intercontinental where we are staying to cafe snacks to extraordinary dinners, has been fresh, tasty, and presented with panache.

After reunioning with our daughter whom we haven't seen for three months since she left New York for Prague, we went to Kampa Park, considered the best restaurant in Prague, located just below the Charles Bridge. We decided to eat in the riverside terrace, in the glass room at river's edge although it was both too cold (it's blustery cold outside) and too hot (the gas heaters above the table). But this vantage point gave us views of the twelve giant swan, the bridge, and the Old Town on the other side of the Charles River.

We were excited to see salads on the menu although not so excited to see the prices! This restaurant is as expensive as many in New York City, so our expectations rose quickly. And we weren't disappointed.

I started with a beet root salad with goat cheese cream, shallot dressing and basil pesto hidden underneath a pile of arugula. Impeccably prepared, each leaf of arugula was delicate and young. The favorite appetizer for the table was the grilled octopus although the pumpkin soup with walnut ravioli and black trumpets was light and refreshing for an autumnal favorite.

The seared monk fish was rolled and placed on a plate with a cream cause that was so light I forgot that I might be takng a few years off my life by eating something so rich. It wasn't just cream, it was infused with lobster flavors and foamed. Foam is a detail on most menu items. Other folks had a plate with four types of duck, from foie gras to duck breast to traditional duck and duck confit. Or the halibut, roasted and delectable.

My dessert of chocolate, two types, with a bitter orange and chocolate gelato was perfection.

We walked back across the Charles Bridge, dating back from the 1600s, which is under reconstruction. The famous statute of Christ with Hebrew letters above it has a story connected to it. Here is how Steven Plaut describes the strange and horrific irony. This country, like most of Central Europe, has a complex and anti-Semitic history with the Jewish people who lived here. The Jews here were immediately rounded up when the great appeasement gave the Nazis control over the country in 1938. However, even without the Nazis, there is a hideous history here.

The glistening golden letters around the statue of Christ have always been a matter of controversy for Prague's Jews. The statue with the letters raised around it is a central feature on the Charles Bridge, the bridge that spans the Vltava River, joining the two halves of Prague. It was built in Prague's golden age by King Charles I, the Czech king who went on to become Charles IV of the Holy Roman Empire. The bridge is one of the artistic wonders of Prague, full of crowds admiring the statues of saints and kings bedecking the sides of the structure, long since converted into a pedestrian avenue. But the statue of Jesus has long been the center of contention.

In 1696, the Prague authorities accused a local Jewish leader, one Elias Backoffen, of blasphemy. As his punishment he was ordered to raise the funds for purchasing of gold-plated Hebrew letters, placed around the head of the statue, spelling out "Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord of Hosts," the Kedusha from the Hebrew prayer and originating in the vision from the Book of Isaiah. The inscription was a symbolic humiliation and degradation of Prague Jews, forcing them to pay for a set of golden letters referring to God and hung around the neck of the statue of Christ.

Prague by Night and Day

Today we went to Prague Castle and walked through St. Vitus's Cathedral: going from chapel to chapel inside this Gothic structure, listening to how people died: torture, thrown into vats of boiling oil, tongues pulled out, infanticide, patricide. Once again the pain of being human inspired the magnificent beauty and uniqueness in each of the many chapels. We entered just as noon mass was ending and got to hear the pipe organ fill the entire church, which is enormous.

But it was the Lobkowicz Palace that brought me into vacation mode. We sat through a concert of viola, piano, and flute: Mozart (the Turkische March was particularly strident and fun), Beethoven (we were humming Romance for hours afterwards), Vivaldi (Allegro from The Four Seasons), Dvorak in a sitting room so that as I listened to each note, I floated back into time, a member of the court invited to an afternoon's entertainment. The Lobkowicz family was always connected to music. The patriarchs were patrons to both Beethoven as well as Mozart, and there are original manuscripts of Beethoven's Fifth and Eighth Symphonies as well as the manuscript for Handel's Messiah, with their own notes for concerts played in the palace. The family first lost everything to the Nazis, then to the Communists, but their possessions and portraits as well as a collection of musical instruments have been reclaimed and back in the family palace.

Walking out of the Palace, we suddenly found ourselves in front of Franz Kafka's house on Golden Lane, a tiny house, where I purchased a copy of Metamorphosis and we all posed in front of the door.

Prague is cosmopolitan yet not rushed. Shops don't open until eleven or noon. Life is slower and it's infectious. All of us are relaxed, only checking email twice a day. Breads, fruits, cheeses are all fresh and flavorful. However, we still haven't met any Czechs. We are traveling, two families, and because we have our nearly adult children with us, we are not ready yet to open our conversations up to others. But we have only been here for two days: today was our first intentional walking, to Prague Castle, which would take weeks to go through. It's the Louvre of Prague and still the home to the President of the Czech Republic.

However, I don't feel ashamed to be an American here anymore. Not with Obama giving his Saturday addresses, appointing an economic team that will restart confidence in the marketplace, banks, and employment. Not with the vitality of our children here with us, two still in college, one her second year out in the work world.

Traditions in Central Europe

Several observations about the Czech Republic: the keyboard on the computer is different, because of the accent marks needed to write in Czech. This language was almost wiped out during the Austrian then German occupation. Currently only about 4 million people on the planet speak this language. It's very difficult to speak, even more difficult to understand.

Last night we made a reservation at a restaurant, V Zatisi, that we believed was just passed the astrological clock square and down Karlova on Lillova. The maps appeared to be navigable. However, once we got passed the clock, during a cold, blustery pre-snow storm, the map and reality no longer matched. No one quite knew what we were asking them. We had no idea what they were saying back to us.

Somehow we got there. We even got there at the right time for our reservation. And once there, the food was exceptional, a real surprise. I won for the best appetizer: pumpkin and pear soup with cinnamon cream foam. There was an asparagus salad, and a seared tuna or a tiger shrimp that was infused with citrus and served in a sharp cream sauce. For entrees, there were a lot of portions of "Bambi" served at our table, but I had the sea bass with two sauces, and once again, mine was the freshest and tastiest.

We walked home in a snow storm which continues today, although suddenly the sun has come out. So far we haven't met any Czechs. We will be going to an art area today after stopping by some churches (there are churches on every block), and perhaps in a pub, we can engage people in conversation.

CNN is so much more grown up here in Europe. I would watch it in America if it was this good at home. There is no discussion about whether John Roberts looks better in a tie or without. Instead there was an entire half hour devoted to the Middle East this morning, another to Africa. The United States of America is not the center of the world here and it is a relief.

Prague in the Czech Republic

There is something about the first moment when I see a new city; we arrived at 4:30 in the morning on a Saturday. It was dark, it was snowing as we drove through abandoned streets, not a single car, not a single person, into Old Town where our hotel is located.

These buildings each has a novel inside it, just from the facade without even walking into a hallway.

We had breakfast, Iwent to sleep for two hours, and then I was drawn out of bed and onto the streets.

Prague is a city that was never bombed, so it is medival in architecture. Even the Soviets respected the aesthetic of the city. Each building is unique with statuary, murals on some, metal work, a wooden door. In just an hour, I shot over 65 images. In an hour, I was freezing, because it is cold, chilling to the bone, windy, but so beautiful, so full of a history that remains unknown to me.

I came back to the hotel for another sweater and went out again, walked across the Charles Bridge to the Lesser City, wandered with our friends up and down streets, just taking in the age of everything.

So Hillary is going to be Secretary of State. I wonder how Bill will be kept in check.

So it feels OK to be an American here again. People are excited despite the economic disaster that is spreading all around. The whole world is hoping that this mortal man will succeed.

On The Art That Derives From Being Human

Last evening I attended the centennial celebration of the artist Arbit Blatas. He was a Lithuanian Jew who left his native land in 1929 to study in Paris along with Soutine, Picasso, Utrillo, Braque, and Matisse. He was one of those painters who was successful during his life; his work was exhibited in Paris and New York. He fled Nazi-occupied Europe and came to live in New York in 1941.

The exhibition is at the Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion Museum at One West 4th Street in Manhattan and will run through June 26, 2009.

Blatas was an Expressionist painter and sculptor. His work is divided in the exhibition between the landscapes and nightscapes of Venice, Paris interiors, Grand Opera works (his wife and muse is Regina Resnik, the opera diva), set designs for Threepenny Opera, and bronze sculptures of actors from various performances. These are beautiful, colorful, and flavored to be almost "lite" except for the thickness of the paint, the intentionality of the intense palette.

Then one enters the second gallery: the Holocaust. First there are the seven bronze bas-relief sculptures that were a gift from the Anti-Defamation League to the Hebrew Union College. Originally they were commissioned for the ADL buiding just next door to the United Nations in New York. But since the ADL moved, the bas-reliefs have been in storage instead of being displayed as a reminder of our fragile nature as humans.

This is only one of several Holocaust memorials that were executed by Blatas. His mother perished in Studthof; his father survived Dachau. He was deeply touched by the Nazi reign of terror. There is a permanent memorial to the Holocaust by Blatas in the Ghetto of Venice (1980, 1993), the Shrine of the Unknown Jewish Martyrs in Paris (1981), and one installed posthumuously in the infamous Fort Nine, in his native Lithuania (2003). In addition to the bas-relief panels, there are four canvases: Babi Yar (1944); The Deportation (1975); The Final Solution/The Quarry (1975); and The Last Train (1990). Despite or perhaps because of the Expressionism of the paint strokes, these paintings are horrifying: the desperate use of color, the piling of paint like the piling of bodies onto the canveses.

Then returning to the theatrical and landscape paintings, one sees the similarity of technique; these paintings were indeed painted by the same artist. But the "lite" goes out of the gayer work, and one realizes that great beauty often comes from the depths of pain.

I attended the opening with my friends Anna and Arlene. Anna is the niece of Arbit's first wife and sat for a portrait with him at the age of sixteen. It was an honor to attend the opening with someone whom I love so much and who knew and loved this famous and illustrious man.

My uncle died this morning at the age of 91. He lived a long and healthy life, and succumbed to lung cancer that ravaged his body quickly and effectively. He died at home, six hours after insisting that he be discharged from the hospital, so that he could die at home. My aunt, my father's sister, is the last remaining member of that generation born just as World War I was ending, finally, mostly because the Flu Epidemic of 1918 had ravaged all sides' armies. They lived through the Great Depression and World War II to raise my generation so that we could accuse them of being hypocrites because they wanted to protect us from the harms that plagued them. They wanted our lives to be pretty and clean.

No one quite knew what Uncle George did for RCA. It had something to do with radar and that shield that ran across the northern border with Canada. He was an engineer who needed to control his life with mathematical precision, and in the end, he wanted to control his death, too. And he did.

When I visited with my aunt and my cousin Ira who had flown in from Israel in time to witness his father's death, my aunt began to cry. She was somewhat disconcerted by her own display of emotion. I held her, she is a tiny woman once again, and told her that these great moments, of birth and death, are what make us human, and that at moments like this, we can understand the utter pain and futility of human existence as well as the joyfulness of knowing there is another generation.

When my own mother was dying, when she would finally fall asleep to escape the pain of lung cancer that had metasticized to her bones, I would listen to Mozart's Requiem Mass through headphones and weep. This is what we share as human beings: birth, life, death.

It's a Whole New World With Barack

Although Barack Obama was adamant in his first press conference after the election that there is only one president of the United States, and until January 20, 2009, it remains George Bush, there is a website Change.gov where the president elect has been posting to the country and beyond.

Immediately, change.gov posted a long list of priorities and promises. That list disappeared off the website, but now it's back, slightly reworded and without the criticism of the Bush administration that was prominent in its earlier edition.

In addition to news, videos, and an interactive section where viewers can tell their unique stories to the administration, there is an agenda section. There are twenty-three articulated issues: civil rights, defense, disabilities, economy, education, energy & the environment, ethics, family, fiscal, foreign policy, health care, etc.

Then there is the "additional issues" list: faith, arts, child advocacy, Katrina, science, etc.

There is even a way to apply for a job. If one doesn't materialize from Obama, the Census Bureau is hiring 140,000 Census takers. Click here to learn more about these temporary jobs.

Once a viewer has gone through the substance of the site, which is worth some time, there is the 2008-2009 Presidential Transition Resources site.

The Presidential Transition Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-293) authorizes the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop a transition directory in consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The Act provides that the transition directory "shall be a compilation of Federal publications and materials with supplementary materials developed by the Administrator that provides information on the officers, organization, and statutory and administrative authorities, functions, duties, responsibilities, and mission of each department and agency." Senate Report 106-348 clarifies that the directory is intended to "assist in navigating the many responsibilities that fall on a new administration" that is "confronted by an overwhelming amount of material."

This site is less accessible, since it is drenched in legalese. But it is a crash course in learning what government is supposed to do.

This will be the first YouTube presidency. In order for it to work, we have to work.

The Election Aftermath: How Women Might Feel

TheDailyBeast.com, Tina Brown's latest publishing enterprise, published a poll today on how women feel post-election. I don't have the credentials to discern whether the poll is accurate or conforms to the rigor of polling, like the polls analyzed by fivethirtyeight.com, the premiere election site. What it shows is an underlying dissatisfaction among women that women don't get a fair shake in the media, at work, at home, or anyplace.

"By an overwhelming 61% to 19% margin, women believe there is a gender bias in the media."

I agree. I believe that public women are still judged differently than men and often by bizarrely unconscious standards. It doesn't seem to matter whether the judging is coming from men or women. Take Maureen Dowd as an example. She seems to hate all women whether their name is Hillary or Sarah.

"48% of women thought Hillary Clinton received fair media treatment and only 29% believed Sarah Palin was treated fairly."

Hillary has never been treated fairly by the media. She has been portrayed as a bitch, a scold, a ball-buster. When she stood by her man, she was critiqued unmercifully for it by everyone, even the Christian Right. I've met her. She is charming, attentive, shrewd, and brilliant. She lost the primary for many complicated reasons, one of which might have been media bias. But let's not forget her husband Bill and her own reactionary political tactics.

The Sunday before the New York primary on Super Tuesday, I spent the day in bed with my laptop, trying to decide between Clinton and Obama. I didn't find much "dirt" on Obama that day, but a helluva lot about Clinton. Of course, she is married to Bill and had been First Lady under assault from the extreme Right for eight years. She wasn't being paranoid. She was attacked.

However, I disagree with the perception that Sarah Palin was treated unfairly by the press. She was the wrong pick; she didn't have the credentials, the knowledge, or the expertise to be vice president. She was treated as Dan Quayle had been during the Bush I run and presidency. Let's recall that Dan Quayle is best remembered for his attack on the morals of Murphy Brown, a fictional television character.

As reported then in Time: And yet the Vice President dared to argue last week in a San Francisco speech that the Los Angeles riots were caused in part by a "poverty of values" that included the acceptance of unwed motherhood, as celebrated in popular culture by the CBS comedy series Murphy Brown. The title character, a divorced news anchorwoman, got pregnant and chose to have the baby, a boy, who was delivered on last Monday's episode, watched by 38 million Americans. "It doesn't help matters," Quayle complained, when Brown, "a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman" is portrayed as "mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'life-style choice.' "

Quayle was cute and telegenic, just like Palin. He couldn't read a script as well and didn't have her fantastic comedic timing. But Palin didn't have to go on Saturday Night Live. She didn't have to sit through that degrading rap during the news segment. She chose to be a media hog and was properly criticized for her narcissistic desires for attention. If you haven't seen Amy Poehler's rap, click here.

I don't believe it was sexism that brought Sarah Palin down, but her own and McCain's incompetence.

Where I do see sexism, however, is on behalf of the McCain aides who chose to deflect criticism away from how the McCain campaign was run by picking on Palin. John McCain is responsible for his loss, no one else.

We are all weary of the hysteria of the election, yet strangely, I'm longing for the intensity. President-elect Obama is keeping cool in his Chicago transition office, making decisions behind closed doors. Joe Lieberman keeps his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, a decision I deeply regret. Eric H. Holder, Jr. is tapped, perhaps, as Attorney General, a decision I support. Hopefully, the Obama administration won't be Clinton III, although it is looking that way.

What Obama will have to deal with is the rage of women, especially Democratic women, whose fury might have solidified and been named by the inadequate substitution of Sarah Palin for Hillary Clinton. Whether it was the press; the Democratic Party; the men we are living with ( 4 in 10 men freely admit sexist attitudes towards a female president. 39% of men say that a male is “naturally more suited” to carrying out the duties of the office.); our jobs, bosses, and colleagues at work, we know that something was let out of Pandora's Box, according to this survey, and we while we are dealing with our racism, let's deal with sexism, too.

Hillary as Secretary of State: Wait a Minute, What About Bill?

Although the Guardian is saying that Hillary is about to accept the invitation to become the third woman to serve as Secretary of State, I am wondering how she can take this position and not put some restraints on Bill Clinton's ability to raise funds for the Clinton Global Initiative.

According to its own website, the Clinton Global Initiative has pledges from 1,000 entities amounting to $30 billion to "improve the lives of 200 million people in over 150 countries."

That's an awful lot of money. It's not just the Global Initiative, but the Clinton Presidential Library, too. Bill likes to ask people for money. According to the New York Times, Clinton has raised $500 million since he established the Library Foundation in 1998. Last year he collected $10.1 million in speaker's fees. According to The Daily Beast, Bill just collected $500,000 for a single speech in Kuwait. That's even high for Bill.

How can he continue to collect that kind of fealty with her acting on behalf of the United States government?

Yet the Guardian reports that vetting the donations to the foundation is unlikely to cause Hillary a problem.

Back in March 2008, when Hillary was still battling Barack for the Democratic nomination, Bill Bradley (former NBA star, Rhodes Scholar, US Senator from New Jersey, and former contender for the Democratic nomination) worried about the impact of Bill's fundraising on Hillary's ability to run for the presidency against John McCain, if she won the nomination. Here is what Sam Stein reported Bill Bradley said in the Huffington Post:

"I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library.

And the reason that is important -- you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed.

These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain."

Ummmm. Transparency?

Another Form of Racism

Tonight I attended a public lecture by Professor Harry Reicher on how the Nazis used a faux form of law to justify their annihilation of the Jewish people (and the Roma, homosexuals, and anyone else they didn't like). The Nazis drained the essence out of law, leaving merely the outer shell--indictments, trials, judges--but without any substantive content. There were two kinds of law in Germany: law when two Germans were involved, which still operated according to legal conventions and the law that operated when a Jew was involved. That was merely a pretext.

In the twelve years the National Socialist Party was in power, 2,000 laws were declared, slowly tightening the noose around the Jewish people living in Germany, then all of occupied Europe. The idea was to destroy all influence that Jews had in government, university, business, literature, the arts, everywhere. At the time Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews were less than 1% of the German population, and obviously as the racial laws were announced, (they were not enacted, but mostly decreed by the Fuhrer and his counselors), many Jews fled, so by the time the camps were opened, the population of Jews in Germany was less than .5%.

"No one died in Auschwitz illegally," one scholar has declared. Laws were passed so that the German people believed that the actions taken against Jews were justified, and the Germans were obedient people then, even the Jews.

I am not equating Nazi Germany with any aspect of the United States although there were times during this lecture tonight when I thought about the Bush signing statements, the John Yoo memoranda justifying torture by distorting the meaning of the Geneva Conventions Against Torture, international and domestic law.

That isn't where I want to go.

Instead I want to talk about two systems of law, the two systems of law that operate in the United States now: white law and black law.

I raised a daughter on Long Island. When she was out late, once she was old enough to get into a car or drive one herself, my fear was that she would be in a car accident. An African American mother, my friend Vanessa, who has raised two sons on Long Island once told me that whenever her older son is out late, she worries that he has been picked up by police officers unjustly.

Racism isn't just mugging for fun. This is also how racism manifests itself here.

Another African American mother, a colleague, who has raised three daughters here and who is raising her grandson now wrote this about how law affects her and her daughters:

In May of 1973, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through the state legislature a set of stringent anti-drug laws. Among the most severe in the nation, the purpose of these laws was and is to deter citizens from using or selling drugs and to punish and isolate from society those who were not deterred. "It was thought that rehabilitative efforts had failed; that the epidemic of drug abuse could be quelled only by the threat of inflexible, and therefore certain, exceptionally severe punishment."

The new drug laws, which have since become known as the "Rockefeller Drug Laws" established mandatory prison sentences for the unlawful possession and sale of controlled substances keyed to the weight of the drug involved. Generally, the statutes require judges to impose a sentence of 15-years to life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces, or possessing four ounces of "narcotic drug" (typically cocaine or heroin).

When my daughters, now 28 and 23 starting smoking marijuana, I printed out the above description of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. When they sit in their cars and smoke, I walk to their car window, knock on the window, and ask if they have forgotten the Rockefeller Law?

Life is no longer the same as it was during the 60’s when I was growing up. I was never a drug user, too busy trying to get out of high school. My aunt told me I could get a job at the “phone company” when I graduated high school. I didn’t think I wanted my babysitting money to go up in smoke, up in my nose, or in my arm. Today so many chemicals have been added, weed is man-made. It is made to take your head off your shoulders. The guy who sells weed, now sells crack cocaine, crystal meth, and speed. One guy supplies all. You can buy your works from him. He has become the new BJ’s of the drug world.

I remind my daughters that today, along with the Rockefeller Law, marijuana use is set up to destroy their futures. As young black women, they may not get a job, because of drug testing. They cannot get financial aid to further their education, if arrested for drug possession. No matter the quantity they might be caught with, they lose. For a black person, using drugs sabotages our future.

I don't believe this is true for white people living in middle class suburbs with access to jobs that require a B.A. degree. This is racism, too.

Some Parting Thoughts From Condi Rice

I suspect that Condoleezza Rice, first as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State, will be judged harshly, not just now, but by history. Loyalty is not the primary quality one needs to work close to the center of power. Fawning loyalty, as we watched coming from Rice, is very dangerous.

In the New York Times Magazine this weekend, there is a redacted and edited interview with her. It's hard to read and not judge her harshly. Right up front, her spin, her delusions are thrust right into the reader's consciousness, eliciting memories that paint a very different picture.

"WHAT THE ELECTION THAT HE [Barack Obama] WON MEANS.
I’ve heard people commenting on how in this election, in far places, people talk about what is a caucus and how does that differ from a primary. I think that links up with the fact that the United States under this president has been more active and more insistent that democracy is not just something for a few. People are watching, and I think they’re trying to learn from democratic experience.

When people from around the world think about the Bush administration, the first word that jumps into their minds is not "democracy."

Here is a link so you can read it yourself. In fairness, I wonder whether any of us could withstand the pressure of being so close to the "ring." Even Frodo almost succumbed.

More on Unhinged White People

According to a disturbing Yahoo news story, there has been a significant increase in bias crimes since Obama's election. Remember, Obama won this election by over 8.5 million votes and although still unsettled by 365 to 173 electoral votes. These have been the highest margins since Bush I beat Michael Dukakis twenty years ago.

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show has coined a name for this contagious fear that is running through some white people who are buying guns at rates never seen before: Baracknophobia.

It's source: Fox News!

On November 13th, Stewart put together a series of clips coming from the sewer that calls itself "fair and balanced." Click here to watch.

With the election over, there is less reason for people to be glued to their television sets so the cable news stations--CNN, MSNBC, Fox--are drumming up news. Mostly it's who is going into the Obama cabinet: Will Hillary be chosen for Secretary of State, or perhaps Bill Richardson?

Will Governor Paterson appoint Nita Lowey, Caroline Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or Andrew Cuomo to fill the Senate seat if Hillary is tapped?

Or where the Obamas will send their daughters to school in DC. Will it be Sidwell or Georgetown County Day?

What's happening at some of these fancy private schools is chilling. I was told about one prestigious country day school in the south where administrators had to devise a special program because administrators and teachers were hearing the echos of Fox News: Obama is a terrorist, a radical, that America is about to be radically remade into a Marxist state, that Barack Obama was just like Adolf Hitler, a comparison made by Republican Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia, and reported on Fox News. The few African American students enrolled in the school were being isolated. Things were escalating.

These children were obviously parroting what their parents were listening to and saying at home. What is this all about?

This is not the hope and change that the majority of American voters were talking about. How has it been distorted?

It seems that high school entitled are not the only ones who are experiencing outbursts of racism. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Saturday that a fraternity at LaSalle University was suspended for shouting racial slurs at African American students on campus. In addition, St. Joseph's University has a planned vigil after racial graffiti appeared in a classroom. And African American students at Lehigh University have demanded curricular changes and a diversity officer after racial epithets were hurled.

The instances are not limited to Pennsylvania. Similar incidents were reported at North Carolina State and Baylor.

"The only surprising part about it all is that it's happening on college campuses," said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University. "It's not surprising that, in the aftermath of an election where there is greater political power for African Americans, we would see a resurgence of racism and white supremacy."

It might not be surprising, but it's up to all of us to make it unacceptable.

Over 500 People Mourn The Death of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue

Despite the steady rain, over 500 Long Islanders came to the spot where seven young, angry, unhinged white men surrounded and stabbed an Ecuadoran man, Marcelo Lucero, killing him brutally. This outpouring by the community is important, because it shows that there are decent people who want to change the way we interact with each other.

The change that people voted for this past election is essential to America's future. It doesn't just happen. Whenever I feel despair, I watch those crowds at Obama rallies once again. I see America as it can be, should be, as most Americans want it to be. But we have to make it be. It is not a passive experience. We must be intentional in healing the wounds that run so deeply in our national psyche, and within our individual stories. Racism is very complex and often very personal. It can be undone, if we believe that we can.

Here is a link to the Newsday coverage of last night's vigil. There is video and a slide show, too.

Be intentional in everything we do. There is no time for despair.

Will There Be Justice After Bush?

The Center for American Progress Action Fund released its "Change for America," a blueprint to bring our country back from the depths of Bush-Cheney lawlessness, incompetence, cronyism, corruption, opaqueness, profiteering, and hypocrisy. Click here to read the table of contents of this newly released book, a real collaboration by some of the best progressive minds in America. The Center for American Progress, for those of you who might not know, was started by John Podesta, who is currently leading the Obama transition team. Podesta served as Bill Clinton's chief of staff during the very difficult years 1998-2001.

Reading through the table of contents, and you can download ten chapters for free, one comes across the section on National Security Policy. Within this section is an overview: Public Diplomacy Can Help Restore Lost U.S. Credibility contributed by Doug Wilson, former congressional director and senior advisor at the United States Information Agency. Wilson also served as principal deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Defense, is co-founder of the Leaders Project, and a member of the board of directors of the Howard Gilman Foundation.

What is missing from this new book, developed by one of Obama's most trusted advisers, is a section that demands holding the Bush-Cheney administration accountable for its lawlessness, incompetence, cronyism, corruption, opaqueness, profiteering, and hypocrisy.

In the December 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine, Scott Horton, an international human rights attorney from New York, sets out the case why it is essential that Obama initiate a domestic inquiry into the outgoing administration. If you don't ordinarily buy Harper's, you can access a pdf of the article by clicking here.

In contrasting the Bush-Cheney administration to presidencies past, Horton explains, "This administration did more than commit crimes. It waged war against the law itself."

Admittedly, although "no prior administration has been so systemactically or so brazenly lawless," "it is no simple matter to prsecute a former president or his senior officers."

What are the crimes? They are beginning to sound familiar, but no less despicable: voter suppression; dismissal of professional justice department attorneys; illegal hiring of professional staff within various departments based on religious and ideological beliefs; use of federal offices for political schemes; wartime contracts to substandard and thieving vendors; spying on churches, peace groups, political protesters, anyone with a "funny" name or "foreign" accent. A preemptive war started on manufactured evidence, signing statements that undid Congressional legislation. And torture, rendition, more torture. Misuse of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department into a Dick Cheney and David Addington cabal that shut out policymaking and professional assessments from ever reaching the President to inform his decisions.

The United States, although its law has served as the framework for the International Criminal Court, headquartered in the Netherlands, refused to accede to the jurisdiction of that tribunal. Foreign courts might try to prosecute Bush and Cheney, if they ever step foot outside the United States, but those courts cannot undo the damage wrought to the image and prestige of the United States of America.

Only we can do that. Only Americans can repair that damage. But there is the looming threat of pardons, last minute or otherwise, to prevent prosecution of anyone except for Bush himself. And since Harry Truman claimed executive privilege years after he left office, refusing to answer questions posed by Congress, there is some sense that Bush might claim the privilege well beyond January 20, 2009 himself. And a truth and reconciliation procedure like we saw in South Africa doesn't fit this situation, where power needs to be redistributed once again into a balance of power among the three branches of the federal government--executive, legislative, and judicial--according to function not party or ideological loyalty.

Scott Horton suggests an inquiry, a Warren Commission or Kerner Commission, with a full mandate, findings, and recommendations. Take a while to wade through this document. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but we need to begin to think about how to restore our legitimacy as a country governed by the rule of law.

The excitement people felt working for Obama was the offer of empowerment. Now that we have the prospect of "adults in leadership" again, as superbly stated by Bill Maher after the election, we have to act like adults, too, and learn to read difficult and thought-provoking concepts so that never again do we allow our government to be so lawless, so anti-democratic, and so painfully destructive to the entire planet.

Unhinged White People on Long Island

Suffolk County has the highest foreclosure rate in New York state. It also has a county executive, Steve Levy, who has built his reputation on xenophobic rhetoric and proposed legislation about ridding the county of "undocumented" workers. His popularity is so great among the majority white population that Levy, a Democrat, was cross-endorsed by the Republic Party in the last election.

With fear pervasive in Suffolk, the inevitable happened. A bunch of teenage white boys made sport out of mugging and killing an immigrant from Ecuador in the town of Patchogue. Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old immigrant from a poor village in Ecuador had lived in and around Patchogue for 16 years, and worked in a dry cleaning store, sending savings home to support his mother, a cancer survivor.

Steve Levy called the seven teenagers, out for thrills, "White supremacists." Some immigrant advocates on Long Island have described the attack as a reflection of widespread anti-Latino sentiment and racial intolerance in Suffolk County. Click here to read the New York Times article.

Steve Levy tried to turn this horrendous murder into a one-day news story rather than symptomatic of seething resentment, which he has been partly responsible for igniting. He was forced to apologize yesterday.

VIGIL TONIGHT: Community and religious groups will gather at 7 tonight at the site of the attack at Railroad Avenue and Sephton Street near the Long Island Railroad station in Patchogue. The candlelight vigil is expected to start with a religious ceremony and words from Marcello Lucero's family.

It gets worse on Long Island. On Tuesday night, in Mastic Beach, also in Suffolk County, scores of cars were defaced with violent anti-Obama graffiti. Overnight painted slogans "Kill Obama 08" as well as sexist slurs appeared on about 40 cars in this diverse neighborhood.

Long Island does not have a good history of racial harmony. It began as a segregated area and remains one of the three most highly segregated suburban communities in the country. As more Latinos move into the area, many legally, many to work in agriculture and restaurants, Steve Levy has fueled fires of intolerance. This is in direct contrast to Nassau County's executive Tom Suozzi. When Suozzi was mayor of Glen Cove, he helped start the first day laborer job site, and remains committed to humane treatment of immigrants, whether legal or not.

Racial intolerance is not an acceptable reaction to the economic insecurity that we are all feeling. It's up to the community, all of the community, to speak out against it, to make it clearly and unambiguously unacceptable.

Credit Card Debt

We haven't seen the worst of this financial crisis yet. Now Germany, the European country with the broadest remaining manufacturing base, is officially in a recession. The banks, which were supposed to be relieved of their "toxic" mortgage paper are still holding onto it, because Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has switched course, and decided that the US government is not buying those bundled mortgages anymore.

It's a mess. But it will get worse, because consumer credit card debt hasn't hit yet.

Many people borrowed money at astronomical interest rates from their credit card companies, forgetting, because it was just so damned easy to borrow that money, that credit card companies have some added protection. In 2005 the Congress amended the bankruptcy laws to make discharge of credit card debt much more difficult. The majority of folks file for bankruptcy because of medical bills and unemployment. Now we have a law that makes starting over nearly impossible. Yes, folks didn't know how to stop buying what they couldn't afford, that flat screen television, Coach purse, or a new car. But neither could the US government, states, and practically every corporation in the country, if not the world. Advertising works and people were constantly bombarded with the same message: Buy, buy, buy. Remember just two weeks ago, AIG executives were retreating at a luxury resort in Arizona, right before they asked for more bailout money.

With homes in foreclosure, many people are just walking away. But with credit card debt, that isn't possible. And starting over with massive debt payment schedules eating into weekly paychecks, if people even have them, makes starting over dismal, if not nearly impossible.

Now this isn't the consumer debt that Paulson is worried about as he decides singlehandedly what to do with the bailout money changing course once again.

This doesn't sound right because it isn't. No one should have this much power. And rather than worrying about whether consumer credit is available, once again, nothing is being done to assist the individual family.

With Christmas right around the corner, stores will feel the pinch of credit card balances, unemployment, and the failed bailout of banks. Who can afford to buy anything? Our friends have decided that we are giving food to the food banks rather than exchange gifts this year. And we are all employed still. And the banks, well, yesterday I was at Bank of America, and the small business specialist didn't know that the FDIC now insures interest-bearing deposits to $250,000. I left the bank wondering if anyone has had the time to train the folks who are actually dealing with consumers and small businesses.

It's a mess. I have the distinct wish that Bush resign (well, that has turned from impeachment to resignation ver the last eight years) and let Obama and his team take over before it gets much worse. Then I worry more. Will we crush this mortal man with our expectations?