Come Fly Our Friendly Skies

We flew to Washington DC this holiday; the place where everyday is Christmas for members of Obamacongress... but I digress.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failure to blow up his balls together with an airplane full of people over American airspace, as well as, his success in passing through two international airport security checks was news that occurred mid-way through our stay. 


As we had to fly back home a few days post-Umar, we arrived at the airport early, expecting the usual after-the-fact-and-useless heightened and cumbersome security checks.  Whether security was heightened or not, getting through it was fairly easy and quick.  The lines were short and we got through in 6 minutes flat; I timed it.  As experienced traveling cattle that we have become, we did a lot in those six minutes.  Curtis removed his computer from his back pack, placed computer together with pack on the conveyor belt leading to the radiation chamber where they check for something, I’m not quite sure what (more about that below)...  He then placed his guitar on the belt, removed his shoes, removed his watch, took the change, car keys and wallet out of his pocket, walked barefoot through the metal detector and started retrieving his crap on the other side.  I followed by removing my coat, removing my scarf, taking off my shoes, and putting everything on the conveyor belt together with my heavy backpack. I however forgot to take off my hat when walking through the metal detector.  I was told to take it off and walk through it once more.  I did as told. 


Just when I thought the nonsense was over, I was ordered to enter the full body scanner.  Perhaps I was chosen for this fun ride because I had tried to get through the metal detector with my hat on, or maybe it was my bulky sweater, or maybe I just look like a Muslim male terrorist disguised as a tiny Jewish woman.  No, that would imply that they give some thought to whom should and should not be full-body scanned.  That would smell like profiling, and we can't have any of that in these here politically correct times.  It's best, though obviously not safer, to waste everybody’s time and money by inventing more and more sophisticated mouse traps through which the mice still pass precisely because we don’t want to offend our terrorist brethren and the people who support them.... 


Anyway, the full body scan was quick and painless, and oh-so-cool!  I love tools; and as soon as I came out, I wanted to see how it worked, no doubt freaking out security even more.  I retrieved my crap from the conveyor belt, put on my shoes, put on my coat, put on my scarf, and waited for Curtis to finish dressing himself.  We walked into the terminal where our flight was on time. A seasonal miracle if ever I saw one, almost on the order of baby Jesus himself! 


On the day after our arrival home, Curt and I went out to shop for food.  As he was driving and I needed a pen to write something down, I stuck my hand into my purse only to get stabbed by an etching needle I had forgotten I had stowed away in there when one of my students had returned it at a different time than when I had collected them from the rest of the class.  Etching needles are a good 6.5 inches long, made of hardened steel, extremely sharp, and can easily be inserted through somebody’s ear only to come out cleanly on the other side. In fact, they are sharp and hard enough to be inserted easily into any body part with unpleasant consequences. 


For the longest time my work back-pack was also my travel pack; and before 9/11, I used to carry at least 3 needles with me every time I flew.  I am printmaker and they are tools of the trade, tools I never remove from my work pack. The inefficient rigmarole one has to go through these days to get into an airplane, and which I describe above, started after 9/11 when 19 almost-all-Saudi Muslim Extremist Men high jacked four airliners with the use of simple box cutters; tools I also used to carry onto planes together with my etching needles, since they too are used in the printmaking trade.  The effete etching needle doesn't look as threatening as a box-cutter, but if used "correctly" and with forethought it can rival any box-cutter in degree of lethality.

Since 9/11, I have tried to be a compliant little traveler and have left all my art tools behind when traveling.  So imagine my surprise at realizing that I had unintentionally taken an etching needle with me onto two planes and had not been stopped for it!   There is no way this piece of steel did not show up on the x-ray scanner in both airports.  Is TSA really that incompetent and unimaginative, or did they actually profile me and figure I was not out to stab anybody this Christmas season?  Given Umar's loaded underwear, perhaps the former...  

Making the Karzai Government look Good

The Karzai government could learn from this guy:

Senator Ben Nelson

SOLSTICE!!!!!!

As they say here, "Lord have mercy!", it's the winter solstice "Hallelujah"!  

Tomorrow winter starts, the days get longer, and I get a little happier every day!

I wish I could be this beautiful

You have to listen to the story to see the beauty

Dear ATC,

Thanks for airing Frank Langfitt’s story about laid off furniture workers in North Carolina.   I live in South Carolina, and a story about the evaporation of manufacturing jobs is, unfortunately, not new in these parts.  I was touched by the stories of all three people Langfitt showcased in his report; but it was Bill Curtis’ story that touched me the most.  His story, his insights, his personality, and the philosophy of life that he surely has but did not voice reminded me most about what it is that I like about this place: its people.  He surely does not represent them all, but he reminds me of a lot of them.  What a beautiful and elevating soul.  And what a sad story this one of major economic and industrial shifts.

Thanks again,

Katya

is it just me...

... or does this really sound totally fucked with that kind of lack of logic characteristic of ones nightmares:

The legislation also contains numerous items not directly related to spending. It provides help for auto dealers facing closure, ends a ban on funding by the District of Columbia government for abortions and allows the district to permit medical marijuana, lets Amtrak passengers carry unloaded handguns in their checked baggage and permits detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to be transferred to the United States to stand trial, but not to be released.


...yep it's just one of them fucked up Sundays...

Just one of those mornings...

Being in the middle of darkness, by definition, means that one can’t see.  And in these times, there are days, where I feel overcome by blindness. 

Living with The Ranting Economist puts me in touch with all kinds of “future predictors” and the “faith” that in the long run economic markets recover.  Business news channels with talking heads spelling out their vision for an eventual recovery are always on in our household.  Despite that, and the seemingly wonderful news coming from developing economies South and East of us, some days, I just can’t shake a feeling of doom. 

There is a paradigm shift in the air, or at least there should be; and those can be harder and longer to weather than spelled out by theory.   Until recently the global economy was dependent on the gluttony of the American Consumer; but that fat cow has been slaughtered.  Some of the rosy predictions for our future still seem to be predicated on its resurrection, and that feels like insanity to me. 

Despite “better than expected” numbers, we are in a world of hurt right now; and, on days like today, I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I guess I should learn to be a better “little economist” and start having faith....

live free, consume and die

Thanksgiving is upon us once more. When I came to this country, I had no concept of what this holiday was all about; even though I had learned, as much as one learns in a high school American History class, about  Pilgrims and Indians (we still called them Indians then) sharing the colony’s first successful harvest on American soil before the white man killed and/or displaced all the Native Americans.... I digress.

As I said, I grew up with the story about Pilgrims and Indians, but I had no idea what modern day Thanksgiving was all about.  I started learning as a college student from my friends and their families; for it was with them that I would spend this most American of holidays.  I remember piling up with friends into Lisa’s old Dodge Dart and heading for the Mountains of West Virginia where her dad was a Park Ranger.  We would spend the holiday having fun hiking and rafting, reading around the fire, and participating in that age old Thanksgiving activity: eating, like pigs, the great food that her mother cooked.  There were also the trips by Greyhound bus (remember buses?  those big vehicles that actually took more than one person from point A to point B) to Jen’s house in Arlington, where the holiday had a more urban feel. I did not grow up with a family around me, just two loving, if weird, parents who did not celebrate any of the holidays that marked the Brazilian calendar into which I was born; so it was with joy that I would go off to spend time with these families that were not mine, but that took me in as if I were theirs. In college, I learned to love Thanksgiving. 

I left college, and although I still love the holiday, it now exists in a very different context from the heady carefree days of yesteryear. Since then, I have learned about Black Friday and how Thanksgiving functions commercially. After all, who would we be, in these modern times, had we not transformed a nice abstract concept about sharing and family into a portal for a season of shopping. A season in which merchants make up most of their revenue for the year and find out whether they will end up in the black.  And I learned this the hard way, by innocently venturing out to buy something one such Friday, only to find out that one does not shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving; one actually takes one’s life in hand to fight throngs of insane consumers who wake up at dawn to wait for shops to open in order to have quick access to imagined bargains.

The pairing of good will and sharing with commercial profit has always felt a little incongruous to me; but it was two years ago that this perceived inconsistency of the season took one more bizarre turn.  It was then that, in their infinite wisdom, the legislators of the great State of South Carolina, to the bafflement of many and the ironic mirth of some, upped the ante on the insanity that is Black Friday and started calling it 2nd Amendment Tax Free Holiday.  In South Carolina, on the Friday and Saturday after the Thursday of Thanksgiving in which South Carolinians just spent a holiday eating, sharing, and watching football with their family and friends, they can now go out and buy guns together without having to pay taxes on them (-;  I can’t write this down without smiling...  Apparently boosting gun sales without adding any revenue to the state's coffers to pay for such things as, ohhh, let's say education, seems like a good idea to our legislators during this season of "love and good will" that extends from Thanksgiving to Christmas...

Yes, I still love Thanksgiving... proof positive of the persistence of memory...

  

one small decontextualized quote from a damn nice piece of writing

...Popular culture reminds us that we have things in common and that we are mostly okay.  High culture reminds us that we are alone, not that virtuous and bound to die... Each bears its burden of truth.

-Dave Hickey
Revision Number Twelve: Blockbusters

Art In America, November '09

Words with no meaning: We float unmoored

I quote from a radio report:

"(along the Great Wall of China) President Obama strolled alone for the photographers."

What the hell does that mean?!

One more letter to President Obama- for all the fucking good it does

Dear President Obama,

I can’t express how disappointed I am at what, after a ridiculous uni-partisan process, might come to pass as health-care reform.  It might be “bash insurance companies reform”; but it most certainly is not healthcare reform.

What your leaderless prodding of the congress has accomplished amounts to growing an already broken system in the same broken direction.  This will not help alleviate our problems; it will only exacerbate them.  You people have reformed nothing.  All you’ve done is squeeze one part of the system.  You eek out coverage for a few more people without curtailing any of the costs of healthcare, which was part of your initial promise.  This plan will increase costs in one form or another; and regardless of the nice rosy numbers the House put forth to try and bamboozle us into thinking that this is a good plan, your so-called reform will only serve to grow our already astronomically large federal deficit. 

Medicare is going and will go broke; and because of your lack of true leadership on this matter, you have allowed an uncreative thieving congress to come up with an even bigger Medicare-type system as a solution.  In what universe does this make fiscal sense to you?!  Oh yeah, in a universe where lawmakers do not have to live by the same rules and with the same system of care as those of us for whom they make laws.

The problem with the system starts with having employer mandated healthcare.  Once you start with that, all kinds of obscure deal making between employers and insurance companies, insurance companies and medical offices, medical offices and hospital systems, hospital systems and insurance companies get done that make it impossible for consumers to rationally price any procedure or service in order to chose wisely and cost effectively.  Adding another obscure player, such as a government option, only makes the whole system more obscure and more costly.  This is in no way a competitive solution for an already uncompetitive system.  And oh, let’s not forget the drug companies who make deals with whole countries.  Countries for whom we subsidize drugs because, on the surface, we pay lip service to “the free market”, but what we really do is allow drug companies to lobby our lawmakers to keep this incredibly inequitable system just like it is. The system is the problem, and not necessarily the players.  Your so-called reform just squeezes one player; it shifts costs and fixes absolutely nothing.

A friend of mine used to say that when it came to voting, you just had to hold your nose and vote Republican; though that only worked when the Republicans actually demonstrate fiscal restraint. But 8 years of Bush, 4 of which were with a Republican congress, have taught us that, these days, people in office care only about redistributing taxpayer money into the hands of anybody who will help them stay in power.  And my Dear President, very rarely does this coincide with the good of the country.  These days, going anywhere near a voting booth requires that I hold my nose regardless of what “lever” I pull with my other hand.

Seriously disappointed, and typing with one hand only,

Katya Cohen

addendum: from the Ranting Economist: this from someone in the know...  yep, still bending over

by extension

If a man named Nidal Malik Hasan were to enter a room anywhere else in the world and open fire on innocent people, the media would call him an Islamic terrorist.  But because he did it on American soil, he earns the characterization of having a dissociative disorder.  By that logic then, are we allowed to characterize Islamic Fundamentalism as one big motherfucking dissociative disorder as well?

partial quote of the day

...the connective apparatus between the distance of sight and the proximity of taste...

AF November 2009 p.175     

The Jehovah Witnesses came again today

Just as they did in summer, The Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door again today.  And just as in summer, I did spend time listening before breaking it to them that I was not interested in what they were selling.  It seems that the only salespeople I am able to resist are those selling religion; but that is another story...

Based on, albeit a statistically insignificant sample of only two data points, I have concluded that the most beautiful black women in the world belong to that church.  In summer, it was a most beautiful pair consisting of grandmother and granddaughter who came to offer me salvation. While today my doorbell was rung by a couple consisting of a not so pretty red-haired woman together with a most gorgeous and sexy Haitian woman.  Not only was this woman beautiful, she was passionate; and her passion made her even more beautiful as she wove the insane logic of the bible together with present day events. And as I once again tired of the tedious need that humans have to weave faith into things, part of me let her go on telling me about God just so I could keep looking at her; no doubt, one more sin added to my collection of small sins.

When I decided I needed to get back to work, I interrupted The Beautiful Woman by saying that I really did appreciate them coming to see me and tell me about their faith.  I told them that I was sincerely happy for them in their reading of The Book; but that I was not going to start reading the bible because I am a non-believer.   I never know what is more offensive to Christians; whether it is telling them that I am an atheist and refuse to read their bible, or telling them I am a Jew and refuse to do it; either one usually puts an end to the conversation.

This time I kept the "jewish thing" out of it and went with the "unbeliever thing".  But This Beautiful Believer was not so easily deterred.  She looked at me, in disbelief, and asked me how and when "it" had happened.  I answered, truthfully, that at the age of eleven I decided there was no god.  She asked me what I thought had made me think that way....  "It came to me," I said.  She asked, "But what do you think caused it."  I did not want to get into a big discussion on how my young mind became perfectly comfortable with the idea that primal causes were not necessary, so using bible logic I answered, tongue in cheek, "God (?)."   We went on to talk about morality.

I did need to get back to work and again thanked them for their time. And seeing that she was not going to convince me to read the bible, The Beautiful Woman gave me the pictured pamphlet above on the evils, some of which I agree with, of technology.  We parted friends; and I sat back here to work. ...And then the Siren Song of Evil Technology beaconed me to waste more time by writing this blog.  It is a truly beautiful day out there; and there is a possibility, albeit slim, that those women are spending it more productively than I  (-;

One more letter to ATC...

Zoe Chase titles her piece on your 11/4/09 show “Are We Listening In On Rihanna And Chris Brown?”  And speaking as a probable representative of your demographic: a subscriber, 49, and an intellectual snob, the answer is a resounding “NO”. 

 

This is the second time you’ve wasted air time on this story, please leave it for the tabloids to follow and instead why don’t you waste my time with something like dead air instead.

 

Seriously and Sincerely,

Katya Cohen

 

Doug Hoffman: Anti-gay, Pro-life and...

...LOSER!!!!!!

woohoo!

lemme get this straight...

...Obama calls to congratulate Karzai  for "winning" a run-off election that did not take place since his opponent, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the race saying that there was no point in him running in what was certainly going to be as fraudulent an election as the one that prompted this one in the first place (!!!!)

Couldn't "the leader of the fucking free world" have at least waited a few days to call, maybe make the man sweat a little... ...Afghanistan will surely eventually shake this latest empire off itself as it has done with all those that have tried to tame it in the past; and, as usual, it will not do this without inflicting much pain.  Organize this Mister Community Organizer;  I thought you had it all figured out when you were running for president....

Driving While Tripping...

The trippy colors of fall are upon us.

Every year it's the same. I complain bitterly about the fall equinox, all the while marveling at the beauty of sunny fall days, and then disbelieving my eyes when trees, which to my tropical mind should always remain green, start turning bright yellow, orange and red.  

For as long as I can remember around here, this chromatic reversal has happened at the same time that certain species of trees, such as oaks, have turned to the brown that I associate with the horror of winter.  However, for the past two years, the wild colors have come before the brown, coexisting with the green, and giving rise to a short-lived dream that these colors might indeed be permanent without signifying the yearly shutting down of photosynthesis that announces the coming of winter.  In the past few days, the air itself has given the impression of being tinted with yellow, and nothing seems real. 

This year, coincidentally, the LSD colors of fall have peaked on October 31^st, just in time for Halloween: a holiday celebrating the unknown, and a festival with pagan origins to which, just as with Carnaval in Brazil, I don’t feel much of a connection.  Children will come to our door dressed in what they think are scary costumes, and we will give them commercial candy because it is easier and safer than giving them apples; because the kids would hate to get anything else; and because the candy industry has happily reinforced the idea that this is the norm.  And barring a natural or man-made catastrophe, the night will pass on like any other. 

In the morning, leaves will start turning brown, and more and more of them will start falling.  And while nature goes dormant, a season of outdoor chores will be upon us.  ...And I will start counting the days to the solstice.  I was, like every other living thing, indeed born on a specific day, though I feel unable to count years by that date.  It is only during this season, this harbinger of shorter and shorter days to come, of darkness and of death, that I understand the meaning of a year gone by.  It is not a very profound feeling. Happy Birthday nonetheless.

2 fucking thousand pages

Pelosi's healthcare reform bill is two thousand pages long.  Now, you know those fuckers in the house can barely read this shit, much less understand it and it's implications.  I guess it's time for more bending over....

End of Empire

If every congressional decision (health care, bailouts, Vietnamistan, I mean, Afghanistan)  is based on skewing biennial elections, we be fucked...  ...and every decision is; and, oh yeah, we are well fucked... It's been nice, America.

phone pic of the day

I despise what the American Industrial Complex has done to food; which is to take its raw materials and turn them into waste without even stopping at edible...and the world keeps lapping it up...

saving is not "forgetting to forget"- holy fuck this guy was at Harvard!

Dear The World:

It was with interest that I listened to your report on Viktor Meyer Shöenberger’s Book “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting etc.”, for I too think that there is a cultural problem brewing due to the ease and low cost of saving information digitally.  I do however completely disagree with his premise that equates this act of “automatic digital saving” with “remembering”.  In fact, I think it results in quite the opposite.  By virtue of the ease of saving information digitally, we basically put information into what amounts to one big electronic drawer where we proceed to immediately forget it.  

Shöenberger’s equating of “saving” with “remembering” is fallacious; they are not the same thing.  Saving everything electronically is a crutch that precisely allows us to stop actively remembering things; it makes us lazy and forgetful.  Ask any teacher what has happened to their students’ ability to remember things with the advent of easy digital storage. I am a teacher, and sometimes I think my students have Alzheimer’s. Way I see it, “digital saving” can more easily be equated with “forgetting” than with “remembering”.

The story from the book that your reporter related about the woman that did not get a job because of a picture of her with a drink on Facebook has nothing to do with the act of “remembering”.  In fact, in a moment of charity, I would call it an act of “forgetting”: she forgot to remove the picture from her page when she applied for the job.  In my more uncharitable moments, I call her original posting of the picture an act of “stupidity”;  but that is a whole different category of activity that has also been made easier with the advent of easy digital access.

Sincerely,

Katya Cohen

ahhh, what images can do for you

For the best part of two years I have been working on a self-masturbatory project that might or not turn out to be the 541 page personal deconstruction of the 2007 summer edition of Art Forum that I envision.  While working on it today, I decided I wanted to include on one of its pages the image of a boxcar that transported Jews to their demise in concentration camps during WWII.  My decision to do so started more tongue and cheek than the subject might call for....

I found a picture of a boxcar on a Google image search and manipulated it to look as it does above.  I then began to draw it in pen and ink onto a piece of graph paper that will eventually be scanned onto the computer and further manipulated.  Whether this now iconic and terrifying image will carry its iconic and terrifying message within the pages of my project remains to be seen; partly because I am taking it to a bare bones pen and ink, very handmade, almost cartoon-like form, and partly because the impetus for searching the image in the first place came in the form of irony.

What will eventually happen in the pages of my project is something for me, and whomever comes upon it, to ponder in the future.  All I know now is what I am feeling after spending some intimate time with this image of an occurrence that predates me but still resonates. I know that I will never forget this thing that I have not experienced personally; but worse, I will never forgive.

Tim Nohe @ Clemson

As with all Visual Arts departments in universities, the one in Clemson has a visiting artist lecture series I like to attend whenever possible.  Regardless of whether I like what I might see in these, seeing what other artists do and listening to them speak about their  practice is always thought provoking.

Yesterday I was able to attend Tim Nohe’s lecture about his work.  It was stimulating and punctuated by moments of beauty.   Nohe is an image and sound artist, with sound playing a, if not the, major role in his work. The lecture consisted of video snippets of some of his pieces, as well as, of him in the process of producing his work.  All of these, without exception, were accompanied by the sound tracks that are so important to his practice.

Imagine my surprise then when, as I listened and watched in semi-darkness, I noticed a woman standing to one side, signing to what obviously was a deaf student sitting in the audience.  I was reminded of one of the things I do love about America; the fact that disabled persons have rights, and that they are not institutionally invisible as  happens in so many countries.  That being said, I had to smile at the irony of having a deaf person come see a lecture by a man whose primary medium seems to be sound.  And I wondered how one signed the wonks, wheees, shhhhhhs, buzzes, wouuaaas, tenk tenk tenks, and whirs I was hearing...

sometimes I lie

I have vilified autumn on these pages in a futile attempt to magically preempt the end of summer.  I have failed, but that's alright.  There is truly nothing like a beautiful early fall day, clean and crisp like the sound fine crystal makes when tapped.  An intense clarity so different than that of spring, which comes full of promise.  Fall days don't promise anything, they are self-assuredly present. Their warmth mellow like a good wine. Today was a good day to be.

...and to look for sunny spots in all the right

and all the wrong

places

One of the many reasons I hate America

A most unoriginal reason: unsolicited fucking phone calls.  

It is Saturday and my phone has been ringing since 9 am.  I don't even pay attention to the damned thing anymore. As luck (or lack thereof) would have it, a good friend called from London; and I did not even get up to listen to the answering machine because the phone had been ringing all morning for no real reason.  When I noticed her voice emanating from the cabinet where I keep the phone, I ran to pick it up only to drop it and retrieve it as she clicked off.  I took the phone to my office in case she tried again.  Sometime later, the phone rang once more.  This time I picked it up without waiting for my "electronic secretary" (as they call it in Brazil) to answer; it was some poor schlemiel asking for Curtis Simmons.   I could have told him, truthfully, that there was no one by that name here, since my husband's name is Simon.  Instead I lied sweetly and bold-facedly told him that Curtis was not here at the moment and could I take a message(?).  He said he would try later.  

It all just makes me angry and sad.  I hate lying. I hate being disturbed. I hate thinking some poor person needs to do this for a living.  And most of all, I hate making my friends talk to my answering machine when I am right there standing next to the phone, because if I pick up, and it is not a friend, I will have to lie and feel badly all over again.  So, like I said, there are a lot of reasons I hate America some days; but having to make my friends talk to an inanimate object, because laws that promote the kind of lazy capitalism that is the mainstay of this here big nation have hijacked my communication streams, is Numero Uno.   

....yeah yeah, The Ranting Economist will get on my case for using such a meaningless phrase as "lazy capitalism"... I suppose I could call it "laws passed by a congress paid for by big business in order to fuck consumers more efficiently"... to use part of a Frank Zappa lyric: "Bend over and spread 'em baby".

there is just something about this country...

I don't often love this country, but when I do it is because of the essence that explains this (listen to the broadcast).

a sad day indeed

It's finally here: the fall equinox.

It had been raining for a week and a half after a month and a half of drought and temperatures reaching the 100's (oh heavenly heat).  Today, for the autumnal straight up and down of the earth's axis, the sun finally came back out....

But it is not a happy sun.

quote of the day

I can't; now it's in my head.                           

                                         -Lewis-

Coda for Raymond's Life

This a is revised version of an email I sent to Katarina; she who indulges me in my propensity to spend too much time on this computer telling stories and sending them to her full of typos:

Some time ago you asked for pictures of me and my dad. I include a few--- had to pull them out of albums and scan them on my not so good scanner; forgive the quality. One could not know my dad and not like, or even love, him--- I sure miss the hell out of him, as you must yours...

Every year when we go to Switzerland, Curtis and I make “a pilgrimage” to visit my dad’s tomb. The Jewish cemetery in which he is buried is in the middle of farm fields on the outskirts of the city of Lausanne. We don’t have a car there, so we take a tram to the closest stop, Cery, and then walk the rest of the way.

The walk ritualizes the visit and further solidifies any meaning that the viewing of a piece of granite with his name on it might have. Coincidentally, and redolent of personal historical meaning, Cery is also where one gets off to go visit the mental hospital my mother was interned in when she was non-functional when she was mis-diagnosed with depression. In fact, to access the cemetery, Curtis and I have to walk through its grounds before taking the beautiful path pictured above. It is indeed a trek fraught with significance.

When visiting tombs in Jewish cemeteries, one does not bring flowers but puts small stones on them. We are a harsh people. I am sure it signifies something interesting that the atheist despiser of organized religion that I am knows nothing about. Also, as Atheist Despiser of Organized Religion That I Am, I annually break the rules of “no graven image” by using the pebbles to write out the year of our visit on dad’s tomb before clicking a picture. Somebody always scatters the stones, for no vestige of my doodling is ever there when I return the next year...

The following story happened on our annual visit last March. I’ve been meaning to tell it to you since then, but have been lazy about sitting here and doing it justice. It’s nothing earth shattering; but life always throws me for a loop with all its coincidences. Your blog entry about sharing my dad’s story with Christopher was impetus for me to sit down here and try to tell it as coda to his life.

Notes from March 2009:

Today: one more visit to dad’s tomb. Bad day: morning: annual bank visit to see my mom’s situation: hers much better than ours, thank god! That was not bad; lunch was bad. I got caught in the middle of a battle of wills between my mother and my husband over what restaurant to eat in. We ended up eating bad food (her choice). Mother was happy; Curtis turned into the taciturn impossible self that he becomes when he eats bad food; and I just got pissed off at the food, at my mom, and at my husband. In that state of mind, Curtis and I took the tram to Cery to go to the cemetery and say hi to my father.

After getting out at the tram stop, we walked through the grounds of the psychiatric hospital of Cery where a patient was screaming. Everyone else was acting as if nothing were happening, so we did too. We then took the not so traveled road that leads to the cemetery and that cuts through the dairy farm where a border Collie looked at us in confusion.

Europe is wonderful this way, public paths run through private properties and pedestrians always have the right of way. We said hi to the farmer and to his cows, and kept walking down what is one of the most beautiful and peaceful tree-lined ways I have ever been on.

We arrived at the cemetery where, for the first time, we met a caretaker. Usually the place is deserted. Taking advantage of the fact that someone with keys to the bathroom was actually on the premises, Curtis asked if he could use it. In all our past visits, the bathroom has been locked, forcing Curtis and I to occasionally urinate on a plant or two around the property; action for which I am sure the bible decrees we should be smited. Given that I have a propensity to talk to “deus e todo mundo” (god and everybody), I started talking to the caretaker who proceeded to tell me the history of the cemetery. He told me that this new Jewish cemetery was built because the old one is running out of space, and the Jewish community needed to start planning for the future of its dead. This I already knew since my grandparents are buried in the old one and there was no more real estate available for my dad to buy when he was dying.

I guess that because Curtis had asked to use the restroom, the caretaker started telling me the story of his life together with that of the man who founded the cemetery by bringing up a disagreement they had had over whether or not to leave the bathroom open for visitors. The caretaker had argued for leaving the bathroom unlocked. But the bathroom stays locked because Theodore Guissman, the man who founded the cemetery, wanted it that way to ensure against vandals and to keep drug addicts from shooting up in there; a common occurrence in Europe where drug laws are more rational than in America. I can’t see heroin addicts being industrious enough to walk all the way to this place in order to shoot up; but vandals in a Jewish cemetery, that’s not so hard to imagine.

The caretaker proceeded to tell me about his respect and love for Theodore Guissman (recently deceased and, ironically, not buried in the new cemetery). Theo was in finance and real estate. He moved in the upper echelons of society and politics, and worked very hard to establish this cemetery in which my dad finds himself now buried. It took him five years of wheeling and dealing to find a piece of land in the Canton de Vaud where to build it. Switzerland is divided into Cantons; and perhaps the closest we have to those are States, but Cantons seem to be fully sovereign. After all these years of visiting, Switzerland is still a mystery... I digress.

It took Theo so long to find a piece of land for this project because no one wanted a Jewish cemetery situated anywhere near them. When those words came out of the caretaker’s mouth, to my surprise, I actually felt physically pained. Eventually, Theo took his plea to the state, which ceded some of its farmland for the “dirty deed”. 

It was here where I found out that all the farmland in Switzerland is state owned and that farmers lease it for long periods of time, such as 25 to 50 years. The state then, by plebiscite, decides whether the land should or not be maintained as such or developed for other uses. As I said, a mystery...

The state ceded the land for the cemetery with the stipulation that Theo himself would be responsible for establishing all the infrastructure necessary for the construction of this sacred place in the middle of nowhere. The Caretaker, such a nice man whose name I should have asked, told me that Theo put two million francs of his own money, plus whatever other donations from the Jewish community, into the project simply to bring water and electricity to this place that, at the time, was off the grid.

While Curtis visited the tomb to no doubt tell my dad about the terrible lunch we had had, The Caretaker kept on telling me stories about the place. He told me it was built on top of fill dirt removed from the area where a highway now runs adjacent to the farmland. The cemetery had been a pasture once; but because of the fill dirt, the soil is now heavy and never drains properly, flooding every time it rains or snows. I now imagine winters with putrefying soggy flesh...

After telling me about the trials and tribulations Theo had to go through to get the place completed, The Caretaker proceeded to tell me about the people buried in the place and their funerals. He regaled me with the story of one grand funeral of a “florist from Christian Dior”, saying that this florist was the most important man ever buried in the cemetery at Cery. For no rational reason, I felt elated to hear this, for as it turns out, my dad had also worked for Dior, and I, pathetically, thought of him having company. I excitedly told the Caretaker about my father also working for Dior, not as florist but as a representative in Brazil, and pointed to his tomb. The Caretaker looked at me and said, “Alors c’est de votre père que je parle!” (Then it is of your father that I speak). “Ou lá lá,” he said, “There were 250 people here; two policemen to direct traffic; many speeches were given. Your father was well-loved; and there were enormous arrangements of flowers which I threw away when they were no longer alive!”

He then asked me if I had been there. How does one explain to a stranger one’s family dynamics and the fact that my mother had asked me not to come.... I told him I lived in America, and that seemed to be as good an explanation as any. We talked some more, and he told me he was from France and not a citizen of Switzerland. We talked politics and about the bureaucratic rigmaroles of becoming a citizen anywhere; and then I excused myself to go say hi to dad.

I smiled my way to my father’s tomb. I used the pebbles to draw out the ‘O9 date, clicked a picture, and felt so happy that my father had had such an incredible send-off; and that my mom had been able to be Queen that day; and that there is somebody other than me that thinks my father is the most important man buried at the new Jewish cemetery at the Bois de Cery! Knowing what I know about who we are, I had to laugh, not cynically but mirthfully. It turned out not to be such a bad day after all.