Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Sandbagging


How small has the world become? Last night I'm at home working, generally oblivious to the world outside my office, when I get an email from Sam in ViƱa del Mar, Chile, where he and Rebecca are spending the month of June. He asked me if there was a flood in Salt Lake City, because he'd been asked to go help sandbag. I hadn't heard anything about it, but a quick check on a local news site revealed that the suddenly warm temps had caused a very high snow melt and flooding of the Little Cottonwood Creek, which runs within a mile of the house. And I got the news from Chile!

The request was out for volunteers, so I headed to the control center at Cottonwood Heights Elementary to see how I could help. Dumptrucks were bringing in loads of dirt--the local Cottonwood Basin loam--and we shoveled them into sandbags. Later, my "team" was called for to go off-site, in a neighborhood where the bags were already stacked chest high along the banks, protecting the neighborhood from the surging creek. The fire department was in charge there, and all of us stood around until about 11:00p, piles of sandbags at the ready, in case it started to rise again. (As the evening temps cool down, the risk of rising decreases.)

The efforts are remarkably well-organized by Salt Lake County, including utilizing local CERT (Community Emergency Relief Teams--or something like that) volunteers. (Yes, I have been CERT trained but didn't want to wear my funny hat and vest!)

It was nice to see a lot of community support, from wards, scout troops and just willing citizens, including quite a number of friends. Nice way to spend an evening. And fortunately, Sam was in South America to let me know.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Green Myths Debunked


One of the problem with living in a world that has so much information is sifting through all the misinformation to uncover the facts. Now don't get me wrong--I am a committed environmentalist. I don't do everything right, but I certainly have tried to change things in my lifestyle to minimize my tracks upon this planet. Nevertheless, I am often suspect of the environmental actions and methods that are broadly sanctioned in the media.

So I enjoyed this Fortune Special Report entitled: 25 Green Myths Debunked. Everything from "Bottled Water is Safer than Tap Water" (a favorite theme of mine), to "It's OK to Put Plastic Containers in Microwaves" (careful, careful!) to "Hybrids are Much Better for the Environment" (mine is a little better, but not great).

There were several surprises for me, including that it takes four times more energy to produce a paper bag than a plastic one. (I still say bring reusable bags.)

And here's one I hadn't thought of: Is it really a good environmental move for the city of New York to plant a million trees? Well, after figuring in the cost of driving around and planting them, then watering them, then sending city employees out with trucks and gas-burning chain saws to trim them ... well, maybe not. Ooops.

Plenty of myths, or misinformation out there. They call it "greenwashing."

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

East of Eden


My son recently recommended East of Eden and had left a copy at the house (which was actually borrowed from my daughter's friend), so I began with high expectations and finished with high praise. In fact, every time I opened the book I found myself wishing it was my own copy, because more than any novel I have read there were countless passages that begged for markings and margin annotations.

This is an extraordinary novel, in my opinion dwarfing Steinbeck's other works, including the revered Of Mice and Men and critically acclaimed Grapes of Wrath. It is an ambitious novel, albeit one that is glaringly flawed. But on my literary scales, a dollop of ambition more than compensates for a whole slop of imperfections.

This is not a page-turner, urging us forward with a compelling story and an earnest curiosity about what will happen next. And while there is a plot, it is little more than a genealogy, tracing two families from the Civil War to World War I, from Connecticut to Steinbeck's actual homeland--the Salinas Valley in Northern California. It is more a penetrating character examination, and all types of saints and miscreants are on display.

These pages are meant to be turned slowly; chewed on a bit, then carefully digested. Like Shakespeare, there is relentless truth there--about good and evil, fathers and sons, husbands and wives. The book contains more than I could handle on the human condition, both the good and bad in all people, in their various combinations and manifestations. Steinbeck paints archetypes for human behaviors and motivations that can only be known through raw self-examination. There were two kinds I was familiar with, through personal experience: those I am eager to show publicly, and those I don't talk about, but push back to the darkened corners of my soul, hoping others won't notice and I will forget their existence.

The biblical metaphors are heavy-handed and unmistakable. Cain and Abel. Charles and Adam. Caleb and Aron. There is no pretense here--we are trying to understand why people do what they do, and whether they can help it, whether they can change, so we go back to our primeval story. And like the world we live in, there is no shortage of material to bring us to optimism or despair. But also like our world, you often have to look a little harder to see the good.

It would be easy to call this a depressing novel, because sin and depravity stand heavy on their side of the scale. That is to rightfully say that the world is out of balance. Yet East of Eden manages to find hope glimmering in the darkness, and emerges as a triumph of the human spirit and a glory in its potential.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

An American in Japan

I ran across this narrative from a trip to Japan a few years ago and thought it would fit in with this blog:

The first thing you notice about Japan is the all the people are Japanese. I suppose there’s no way to prevent this, unless you had the mind to import foreigners for the sake of variety. Personally, I don’t mind being the odd man out. But I do feel a little self-conscious at times, and whenever they look at me then whisper among themselves I wonder what faux pas I have just committed. More often than not, I think it is good-natured amusement, either at my very presence, or occasionally at my presumption of trying to fit in, whether it be eating the indigenous foods or struggling through the confusion of mass transit.

Fortunately, the Japanese are unfailingly polite and considerate. Their culture is ideally suited to the service industry, and Japanese hotels are the finest in the world. It is a matter of extreme embarrassment if a Japanese person is not able to perform a requested task, and they are willing to go to almost unimaginable lengths to help you. They are embarrassed if their English isn’t sufficient to help you, and will then search for someone else who is more fluent. Several times I asked for help from strangers in a train station, only to have them escort me through the entire passage. And had not I put on an air of false confidence, I suspect they would have accompanied me on the train to my intended destination, even if they were bound in an entirely different direction.

I suppose that if you wanted to drive a Japanese crazy you would ask them to assist you in an impossible task, like directions to a city that doesn’t exist, or to please bring me eggs with the yolk hard but the whites runny. This would be a cruel joke which I would never undertake, but I do think the very notion is a credit to the generosity and helpfulness of the people.

The Japanese are an honest and trustworthy people, by and large. They tend to follow the rules, and expect others to do the same. As a result, I too was on my best behavior. If a sign said not to walk, I didn’t, mainly to avoid embarrassing some innocent who would have to correct my malfeasance.

This natural honesty was a godsend as I dealt in matters of commerce. Unlike most denominations in the free world, the Japanese yen converts to the dollar at the most extreme of ratios—about 123 to 1. As a result, everything sounded expensive, and converting the value of yen to dollars in my head requires a degree of mathematical acumen that I haven’t held since junior high. For instance, a cab fare cost me 3500 yen, which seemed expensive even for New York, and I was sure the driver was taking advantage of my ignorance until I ciphered that it was only about $28.

Their paper currency is pretty straightforward, but the coins are hard to figure out. Most of them make sense, with the yen denomination on the coin. I think others are intended to be something of a mystery, with no number. Some have a hole in the middle, which I never figured out. However, if the amount needed for a transaction was a matter of coinage (the largest coin is 500 yen), I would just hold out my hand with a pocketful of change and they would take out exactly what they needed. And I never once doubted their integrity.

There is no tipping in Japan. Now in the United States tipping is a routine element of the service economy—not only because it’s inherent in the compensation scheme, but also as an incentive to provide good service. Think about the places where they don’t get tipped and the erratic levels of service you find—such as at fast food counters. Nobody cares about the quality of my service experience at Burger King. They don’t smile and ask me where I’m from, or how I like my fish fillet cooked, and they never leave me mints or little notes like “Have a Nice Day! Wanda” on the back of my receipt. No, that’s because there is no incentive for them to do so. They know that no matter what they do to the average French fry, no matter what kind of notes or comments on how cute the kids are or even if they throw in an extra patty on the hamburger, they are not going to get a tip.

This is something of a digression, but very relevant. In contrast, the Japanese view excellent service as a matter of course. To receive a tip for their efforts would suggest that you expected something less than the utmost of courtesy and consideration. And while no one wrote “Have a Nice Day” on my receipt, they did wrap up every purchase quite nicely and were always most accommodating to my every need.

The Japanese eat things that strike fear in the hearts of average Americans—eels, octopus, jellyfish, sharks and the like. Surely the average human would prefer to avoid these creatures altogether. It is one thing to face ones fear, but quite another to eat them—a most perverse and savage form of revenge.

Nevertheless, in my attempt to fit in, I tried a number of exotic foods. One such local specialty in Osaka is tokohaki (here I’m sure I am butchering the name), which is an octopus dumpling popular at public events, kind of like our hot dogs. Actually, there was all manner of octopus available on the street, including octopus chunks and octopus shish-kabob. Actually, the tokohaki was pretty tasty, once I got past the idea that I was eating a chewy suction cup, something like having a rubber-tipped toy dart in your mouth. But with a little dipping sauce, it was rather nice.

The Japanese people come in two varieties—sleight and sumo wrestler. I can understand the former. Were I forced to subsist on eel and octopus, I would be thin as well. I suspect the sumo wrestlers have a different diet entirely, maybe Teriyaki Big Macs.

All the people there speak Japanese. I don’t blame them and would probably do the same if I was raised like they were. But I found it a difficult to language to learn. Nevertheless, they all speak it in the most natural of ways. Even the children. I suppose it never occurred to them to start their kids with an easier language, like English or French. I would like to have suggested that idea, but unfortunately no one understood anything I had to say.

Language was certainly a barrier to communication. But I got over that in short order, mainly by not talking to anyone. However, I found my inability to read Japanese quite a handicap during my day of sightseeing in Kyoto. You see, not only do they speak the language almost exclusively, but they write everything in Japanese as well. Further, it is customary to write signs above the portals of their homes. And to completely confound the issue, they being a very private people, the merchants generally cover the windows of their stores, so you can’t see inside.

As a result, I was never quite sure what kind of place I was walking into. All the characters looked the same to me, the doors were often shut, and so I took to simply walking in. In the process I met some nice people, many of whom happened to be shopkeepers and restaurateurs, and the rest of whom were generally polite to the rather surprising intrusion of this curious American into their home.

I also accidentally found myself in a couple of Japanese taverns (they are very small, about the size of a pottery shop!), several nice artist studios, a silk shop and all manner of places I had no intention of entering or desire to stay. Of course, given my overwhelming desire to be polite, extricating myself from these situations was difficult. The owner would come up to me as I entered, saying something unintelligible in Japanese. On the spot, I felt it incumbent to make some gesture besides an about face, and so I would walk around a little bit, look intently and the goods, nod politely and leave. I still feel badly about disappointing them, but I was not about to buy a scarf just to be polite.

I would like to go back someday, maybe with an interpreter. There are a few things I’d like to ask. Like how they make those plastic plates of food that are in every window. And what sumo wrestlers eat.