Day 842: Back In The USofA

Been away so long I hardly knew the place.
Gee, it’s good to be back home.
Leave it ’til tomorrow to unpack my case.
Honey, reconnect the blog,
I’m back in the USofA.

Bye bye, geophysics, Holland and Paris.  Helloooooo, Christmas and Carnival.  From one set of excitement and challenges to another.  One thing I learned from our energetic instructor in this recent course is the fourth law of thermodynamics, The Conservation Of Misery.  No matter how fantastic a solution to a current problem sounds, it comes with its own set of gotchas and setbacks.  In other words, there is no such thing as an easy lunch.  No matter the cool factor of my course and surroundings, the start of my second week away found me in such physical and climactic misery – my face threatened to stick to the air whenever I walked outside – that I wanted nothing more than to come home.  The homesickness did not abate until I turned on the television, reached CNN World and saw the disembodied heads of Hilary Clinton and John Edwards grinning at me with their $2000 teeth-whitening jobs while soundbites played in the background.  Honest to god, my first and immediate reaction was to wince, shudder, quickly turn off the television and drop the remote control as if it were toxic.  I wanted to go back to that poison? 

What a thrill it is know where you’re from and yet to travel, meet new people and learn new things.  How the misery is conserved when you find yourself an alien abroad and at home.  This is my country.  This isn’t my country.  So it goes.

While I braved maelstroms coming off the North Sea, a different storm raged back here – the so-called debate over public housing demolitions – which reached the eyes and ears of those in my Dutch midst thanks to their nation’s and others’ coverage of the situation.  Here’s an idea for a demolition: let’s scrap the Times Picayune offices and replace it with the New Orleans business outpost of the International Herald Tribune.  I learned more about here and the world from reading the IHT everyday, and missed only the TP’s Living and Obituaries section.  A deal which meshes the best bits of the two papers can be arrived at, I am sure. 

A colleague from Zeeland, which, much like us, suffered catastrophic seawall failure and resulting deaths back in 1953 (his parents went through it)  felt the New Orleanian pain and talked to me of America’s misplaced national priorities.  It was his statement on rights and responsilibity, a balance fought for and achieved everyday in Holland, that stayed with me, “The government must help its people, but the people must want to help themselves, too.”  Everyone in southeast Lousiana, and I mean everyone, must want to help themselves and their neighbors, and I think most of us do, except when I read more and more about the likes of Congressman Jefferson or both sides of the current project demolitions furor.  Maybe I am a bit warpy on the whole perspective, but from afar, it looks like we want to implode with the state and feds providing additional amounts of external pressure.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why does America want this for herself?  We could’ve been a contender, we could’ve been somebody, but now we’re just a bum with a sometimes bum global rap.  Just typing these words about my nation makes me dry heave and tear up.

Therefore, to keep me from going into full-on cardiac arrest, let’s not bring up the almost-bankrupting current US$-Euro exchange rate.

While Americans go back and forth between unblinkingly exporting democracy and the power of Jesus to the Iraqi heathen (and simultaneously importing maps of their oil reservoirs) and self-flagellating for the horribly materialistic occupiers we are, the Dutch and French can afford to think a bit more and a bit more highly of themselves.  The Dutch and French are an odd contrast.  It’s an amusing and revelatory exercise to go from mingling with the people of The Hague to those in Paris and back again, to note that the French are some of the most self-conscious people on the planet while the Dutch couldn’t care less what you think.  Another connection I made is that Holland is to Wisconsin as Paris is to New Orleans.  Controlled vs. expository, straight-laced vs. eccentric, the current generation of previously Protestant atheists vs. previously Catholic atheists, ketchup and mayonnaise vs. a burst of spices and smells, good and cheap cheese vs. good and cheap wine. 

What these two European nations have in common, though, is that rights-responsibility balance again.  The Europeans give up much of their income in taxes, but do they ever get a lot back in return for a nationalism rooted in common sense, good taste and the betterment of self and the fellow citizen.  They get it that paying taxes for good and free schools means more educated and viable people in their midst, not competitors.  They understand that even if one of them never gets sick or suffers a toothache, the health and sanity of their fellow citizens only help their very own selves stay healthy and sane, not “more money in my pocket.”  We work all year to get two weeks of vacation, while they take months off.  Not good for a competitive economy, but what are you competing for, what do you work for, if not a comfortable and fulfilling life which requires the occasional living?  Remember that misery is conserved, it’s the law, so this is not to say that the Netherlands and France thrive without problems (say, for instance, the number of spammers from the .nl domain which made my spam blocker prevent me from logging in to my own WordPress Admin page when using many Dutch servers), but at least theirs are not associated with living with the consequences of the last six years and well before that.  We’re a strange lot, Americans.  I wish we could take a long, hard and critical look at what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.  Yet, there are those around the world who want to be us.  I was one of them once.  So, hope springs, but not quite eternal.

We will come back, we’ve got to come back, to sanity and progress.  There is so much ugliness to fix, beauty to enjoy, tears not to shed, anxiety not to experience and culture to enhance and live when a stable nation mostly at peace in our own home and abroad.  Before all of that, however, we should be allowed the chance simply to breathe again.

Hi, all.  I’m back.