Avuncular American

Obamas, it's not farewell

 

Spot the orange-haired PEOTUS

How to say it?  Like the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music, in a selection of languages?  If so, then it's not with the finality of adieu, but rather a cheerier au revoir to President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle, and the two first daughters.  These are the people who, in 2008, inspired the world (and some Cajuns who sang "Oui on peut") with Yes We Can.

We want to see them again, and we'll need them in the coming years.  Not in another Dynasty saga à la Bush or Clinton families (in any case, Michelle has ruled out running for office), and the post-Franklin Roosevelt 22nd Amendment long ago ended any possibility of more than two terms for Barack.  But as living references to an America that is decent, and one that represents what the future of America can be, after it has its fling with a 70 year old spoiled rich kid for the next 4 years.

As Brussels-based Nicolas Vadot entitled his end-of-year collection of political cartoons, Barack, Tu nous manqueras! (Barack, We'll miss you!), it's going to be hard not having an intelligent, articulate gentleman in the Oval Office amidst all the chaos besetting the world.  And a First Lady who is at least as intelligent, articulate, and who carved out such a special role as a presidential spouse who connected with Americans of all ages, classes, and origins.  "More than a "Mom-in-Chief" is how The Guardian described what Michelle Obama achieved.

Here's a moving collage of video clips, from children to celebrities, on their "Obama Moment."

Next Friday, Inauguration Day, while the nation and the world watch the ceremony in Washington, Americans living abroad will gather for "Thank you Obama" vigils

To show support for the principles of democracy and to thank the outgoing Obama Administration and U.S. Embassy & Consular officials for their service during the past eight years, steering the country through numerous economic and geopolitical challenges, improving our foreign relations and standing in the world community.

Nice idea, and a way of stressing the positive in the face of what millions in the US and across the world see as an unmitigated disaster, the transition of PEOTUS (President-Elect) to POTUS of one Donald Trump, AKA "@realDonaldTrump" to his Twitter fans.

In 2008, I labored in Brussels as spokesman for Democrats Abroad Belgium, appearing in a number of debates, sparring with my Republican counterpart on TV and radio, for the successful campaign of Barack Obama.  Ditto for the campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Had Hillary's 3 million vote lead in the popular vote translated to a win (as it would have been in any country not burdened with an 18th century anachronism called the Electoral College), my "It's okay to be an American again" fridge magnet would have lost none of its shine.  But I'm afraid that in the next four years (God forbid it last any longer than that!), it's going to be hunkering down time for Americans abroad.  Few want to be associated with the America that allowed Mr. Trump to come anywhere near the White House.

Yes, Barack, we will indeed miss you.  Stick around, please, and remain the conscience of a better America.

The Blue Woods of Belgium

Today's post is simply to celebrate the ephemeral beauty of the Hallerbos, the Belgian park just outside of Brussels in Halle.

Every spring, usually April or May, bluebells carpet the woodland.  I've seen coverage in The Guardian, the Washington Post, and on CNN.  Thousands of people line the road traversing the park to take in the spectacle.

Ours was just a little early-adopter digital camera, but the pros were out there too, getting the flowers at every possible angle and shutter speed.

But our pics aren't too bad for point-and-shoot.  We'll be back again next year.

Wild Brussels

"Bruxelles Sauvage: Faune Capitale" is a documentary by Bernard Crutzen, who got the idea after a close encounter with a fox (the fox opens the film, curiously nuzzling the film maker's lens).

We have foxes in our apartment building's back yard, which is a lovely little patch of woods in the city.  There was a day a few weeks ago when all of a sudden, it was foxes running all over the place - obviously mating day.  Since then, not often enough, we've seen a fox sunning him or herself just under our window.

"Bruxelles Sauvage" does have a soft spot for these urban omnivores, though the film does point out that feeding them is a bad idea.  Not only might you lose a finger, but it also encourages over breeding.

Apparently the first (modern day) foxes came to Brussels when trains paved the way into the city in the 19th century.  The film also highlights other creatures, from frogs and toads in park fountains to high flying hawks in church steeples.

And that's part of the pleasure of living in Brussels.  With one of Europe's largest urban forests within the city limits - the Forêt de Soignes - we have endless hiking trails, some within easy reach of a tram or metro stop.  Some of the animals shown in the film, rehabilitated after an injury from a vehicle accident, etc., wind up being released back into the forest.

But you can't beat looking out the window and seeing a fox right at home.   

Brussels' Jewish Museum

It seemed fitting, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to visit the Jewish Museum of Belgium.  Not quite a year ago, this museum was itself the site of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.

I couldn't help thinking that the victims - an elderly volunteer, the receptionist, and a couple visiting the museum - were like the people there to welcome me to the museum.  A quieter, more peaceful place would be harder to imagine.  Only the Belgian soldiers at the entrance hint at the ongoing need to protect the museum.

Dedicated to recounting the long history of the Jewish presence in Belgium (the timeline on the wall starts in the Middle Ages), the museum provides illustrations of daily life of Jews over the centuries.  Their religious beliefs, related feast days, the economic life of the community.

An exhibit on Jewish bookbinders and other craftsmen leads to a small room on the impact of the Shoah in Belgium.  A poster announcing, just months after the fall of Belgium and France in May/June 1940, the requirement for Jews to register "by order of the military authorities."  The announcement is in French, and there's no need to mention whose order it is.

The displays include the usual documentation of the bureaucracy of extermination - ID cards marked "Juif," ugly antisemitic posters preparing the way for the roundup of Jews - but also heroic stories of Belgians who successfully hid Jewish children during four years of Nazi occupation.  And the stirring account of the Nazi train to Auschwitz where resistance fighters freed Jewish captives.

There's a reminder that "Palestinian" was once a synonym for Jews: a letter from the "Office Palestinien en Suisse," a branch of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland, helping Jews find refuge in British Mandate Palestine from the horrors in Europe.

Elsewhere, a photo from a previous German occupation, that of the First World War.  German soldiers (!) celebrating Yom Kippur in Brussels, 1915.  A reminder that German Jews fought loyally in the German army, a fact which meant nothing to the Nazis a generation later.

And yet another occupation, the "Spanish Netherlands" period of the late 16th to early 18th century.  Jewish "marrano" refugees from the Spanish Inquisition had found refuge in Belgium, and the museum displays a book of the period by a captain in the Spanish army, himself a secret Jew.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium is a low-tech, traditional museum.  It is light years away from the sophistication of, say, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  But because it was the target of terrorism, and because Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe need the support of their host countries at this tense time, it should itself become a place of pilgrimage.  

Europe Refresh: Face 2 Face Crowdfunding

Photo courtesy Quentin Houben and Pierre Guilluy of Slide Up at Europe Refresh

Attracted by a newspaper writeup on a great vegetarian foodtruck that is becoming a Brussels institution (Sinstreetfood, their Facebook page), we spent Saturday afternoon at the cultural center of Les Halles de Schaerbeek.  We came for the food (a delight, even though we're not vegetarians), but we stayed for Europe Refresh, the second edition of a unique crowdfunding event.

In which some 44 young Europeans (a good number, naturally, from Belgium and France, but from as far afield as Serbia and Canada) pitched their projects for a chance at some in-person financing.  It was put on by the European crowdfunding people, KissKissBankBank.com.

The idea of bringing such an impressive collection of talent under one roof is very appealing, and from the outset we were amazed at the creative genius arrayed around the space of the former indoor market.

From authors to inventors to entrepreneurs, the range of projects was astounding.  Some are personal: Serbian Gorana Jovanovic and her whimsical short film about Laika, the Soviet space dog; photographer Johanne Verbrockhaven's discovery of the lost Icelandic world of Hornstrandir.

Others are for the greater good: www.mainsdoeuvres.org, which creates participative cultural centers using recycled materials from building sites.  Antiheroes.org and their "Failure School" (they also have something called "F**kup Nights") want us to learn from mistakes, "because a failure shared is not as likely to be repeated."

Ever thought of what happens to the tons of coffee grounds from all the cafés that churn out those cups of expresso?  Well, "Champignon de Bruxelles" has, and they'd like to recycle those coffee grounds as a substrate to grow shitake mushrooms, currently imported largely from China.  Two young Belgian graduates (who also studied at Clemson University in South Carolina) have come up with an impressive business plan.

I could go on.  Best thing is to go to the project list, poke around those that strike your interest, and poney up a few Euros.  It's an investment in a better future.

Citizen's Arrest!

Today I longed for the America of Mayberry NC, that imaginary Sixties town where even as dumb a citizen as Gomer Pyle could shout "Citizen's Arrest!" at law breakers and hope that justice would be served.  Even though the Andy Griffith Show is long over, apparently the notion of citizens reporting traffic violations continues in Rockville, Maryland, a Washington D.C. suburb where we once lived.   There, citizens - hopefully public-spirited and not mean-spirited - can W.R.I.T.E. (Witness Report in Traffic Enforcement) their local police, filling out an online form, which covers everything from excessive speed to reckless driving.

Reckless driving - I guess that's what you might call my encounter this morning while walking back home from the bakery.  On a busy two-lane Brussels street, I chose my crossing point judiciously.  A "zebra" crossing, where, in Belgium, the simple placement of a foot from sidewalk to pavement is supposed to result in traffic coming to a halt to let the pedestrian cross.  In this case, it was even better: a city bus had stopped to pick up passengers immediately before the crosswalk.  I needn't even look left - the bus was in that lane - and the car in the other lane was slowing down.

But skeptic that I am, I did look left, and lo and behold, a big black 4 X 4 with two testosterone-laden young men out to prove that they can pass a stopped bus - a violation - and run down (almost) a pedestrian in a crosswalk - another violation - is bearing down on me.   Luckily, they weren't willfully homicidal, and they did stop at the sight of a bespectacled fifty-something holding up his hands in what - a Gomer Pyle gesture?  I noted down the license plate, the place, the time, and proceeded to walk home.

Now, I realize that I am in the land of 7 parliaments, 3 geographic "regions" overlaid with 3 linguistic "communities," with 10 provinces and their governors and 589 communes with their bourgmestres, and that English common law and its notion of "citizen's arrest" carries no weight.  But I wasn't prepared for the answer to my phone call to the local police station.

"No, monsieur, only a policeman can report an infraction of the traffic code."  Oh, I see.  What if I had been run over?  How about the bus and tram drivers, who daily witness multiple "incivilities" that run the gamut from blocking their route to running red lights?  "No, only police can note violations."  As the lady said, just shoot me.

Napoleon and his Code did rule Belgium before it became Belgium, but even in France, the authorities appear to encourage local initiatives for road safety.  Not here: my police station call desk person wasn't even interested in knowing about a major intersection where just posting a cop would result in daily or hourly or minute-ly red light-running tickets.

Aren't they even interested in a little revenue generation?

Splits, Belgian Style

This post was almost entitled Les fleurs du mal, but I couldn't associate these beautiful bluebells with anything negative.  The walk in the woods yesterday, in Halle - the "H" in BHV (of which more below) - was as usual devoid of politics, though as expected in this part of suburban territory southwest of Brussels (a.k.a. "B" in BHV), all the trail signs were in Dutch.  We have adopted a formula when encountering fellow hikers, who could either be Flemish or French-speakers (or maybe even other foreigners) - my wife says bonjour, and I say goeiedag, like the Aussi "G'day!"  A perfect example from the foreigners to the locals on how to use their unique linguistic situation to positive effect.

What, you might ask, is all this BHV stuff?  It's shorthand for a federal voting district, the only one remaining in Belgium that crosses linguistic lines.  Brussels, Halle, and Vilvoorde, which in almost any other country would simply be called "Greater ______" and here should be called "Metropolitan Brussels," remain stitched together in a throwback to the days when Belgium saw itself as a unified country.  The goal of most of the Dutch-speaking political class is to "split" (that's also the Dutch word) BHV, leaving the officially bilingual but mostly francophone Brussels even more of an island in Dutch-speaking Flanders.  The French-speakers see that as a dangerous step towards splitting the country (they call it scission, which does conjure up the word secession).  

Belgium does "splits" rather naturally, though the results are never as clean as log-splitting being prepared here in the Hallerbos.  We know a couple from neighboring Luxembourg who studied in the ancient University of Louvain when it was located in Leuven, a lovely Flemish town east of Brussels.

They were there in the Sixties, when Flemish nationalists succeeded in chasing the francophones away, who then proceeded to build Louvain-la-Neuve, a soulless concrete new town dedicated to housing the French half of the university.  Right down to the books.  Just think of Harvard's library, divided along, say, color lines: "green books stay here, red covers off to Cape Cod Community College."  Our friends and many others wept at the mindless sectarianism, which back then even included violence.

These days, the separatists appear to be using nitpicking linguistic laws rather than brute force, and the cumulative effect is probably as efficient.  Some francophones who would brave the linguistic divide in search of better housing or cheaper prices run up against laws that are written with linguistic purity in mind.  Some discriminative practices set up by the Flemish authorities have run afoul of the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog, notably over the "Wooncode" which makes the needy pass a Dutch test to become eligible for social housing.

But how about the current political crisis, you ask?  Oh yes: last week a report on BHV triggered the resignation of the Prime Minister, which brings us full circle to summer 2007, when elections started a cycle of interim PM, interminable negotiations to form a coalition, Leterme I government, resignation and another governement, followed by Leterme II, followed by his second resignation...  I've actually left out a couple of resignations.

As Julian Stares says in today's London Observer, there's an apocryphal story about how British leaders "give their Belgian counterparts less time than others at EU summits because they know that within a year or two they'll be dealing with someone new."  That would certainly be true in the last three years.  Think of the economic cost to Belgium of this protracted political instability - would you invest here?

Belgian politicians, it would seem, abetted perhaps by a news media that gives inordinate amounts of coverage to the most obscure of quarrels over linguistic-regional issues, blithely ignore the toll their games are taking on the image of Belgium.  If anything, they should be worried about "Brand Brussels," which is the international hook that draws foreign investors and visitors.  But to many Flemish politicians, Brussels is a kind of Gomorrah of immigrants, crime, and French-speakers.  They don't like it, but they don't want it to leave their embrace.

At least we can go for a walk in the Flemish forest.  Goeiedag.

The Expatriate Condition: Potentially Permanent

Note to readers: this is an abridged version of an article appearing in the current issue of Together Magazine, a glossy Brussels bi-monthly catering to the Anglophone expatriate community.  Sheet music cover from "The Singing War" of Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries.

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Some of us have made this expat business our life’s work.  In public service (I’m most familiar with diplomats and the military), multiple postings abroad are often the norm.  And Brussels is brimming with semi permanent expats whose professional lives revolve around the EU institutions.  But I’ve known lots of private sector people too for whom a life overseas is the culmination of a dream, and who have trouble going back.  It’s an old problem.

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They’ve Seen Paree) put to song the dilemma facing American soldiers who’d been sent to France in the Great War, survived the trenches, then met a pretty Parisienne on a weekend pass.  Some, like Ernest Hemingway, stayed on for a while, and a similar thing happened after the Second World War.  Less dramatic, but no less of a quandary for today’s HR department: how 'ya gonna send ‘er back to Baltimore, after she’s seen Bruxelles?

This expat thing gets into your blood, and it may be hereditary.  Ever notice how many expats are children of expats?  It comes from going to school with classmates from every continent, and from growing up with a different – if not downright confused – sense of nationality.  There are strident nationalists in every grouping, but as a class expats are probably more inclined to see at least two sides to every question.

“Far away fields look green” goes the adage, which makes almost every destination potentially appealing.  Born and raised in the United States, I’ve spent most of my adult life outside my native country.  Mine is a conscious choice, a sort of “reverse migration” for someone whose parents came to the US from County Mayo, Ireland.  But I know a Frenchman, an interpreter, who chose to settle in the US because he finds it “exotic.”  And he lives in suburban Washington D.C.!

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe,” reminisced Rutger Hauer’s dying replicant in Blade Runner; “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”  You don’t have to be an alien to feel like you’ve come in from outer space.  Just be a typical expat returning home to family or old neighbors, who feign interest in your international life for a few seconds before changing the subject back to local matters.  They probably don’t share your reverie about the good life abroad.  Which is why many expats befriend other expats, who can at least relate to a life lived outside the boundaries of “home.”

Oh yes, Home.  Many of us have a clear, unequivocal notion of where that is.  Others aren’t so sure.  Where home is, when home was a certain house, who was at home… home can be, as another old saying goes, where the heart is.  Expats don’t necessarily live out of a suitcase, but they often have a more flexible idea of what “home” means.  When I consider Brussels as home, it doesn’t mean I reject my Pennsylvania upbringing, and feeling “at home” in Ireland is more an emotional link to the memory of my parents than anything territorial.

All of this is not to build up the expatriate condition as a universal solution.  After all, not everyone can or should leave the land of their birth – you might not really want your embarrassing younger brother to show the flag abroad, at least not in your presence.  I remember puzzling over some of my fellow diplomats who persisted in living abroad when their time there was spent largely in the company of their countrymen.

That can be a challenge, mind you – not just getting to know some locals, but actually befriending them.  In a place like Brussels, people have seen scores of expats come and go, and may shy from establishing friendships that risk being broken by a subsequent transfer.

And if it’s hard on the locals, it’s also hard on the itinerant foreigner.  Just listen to the BBC World Service program “From Our Own Correspondent” and you’ll hear the occasional heartfelt goodbye to a place a journalist has called home for years.  Hard as it is to say farewell to foreign places and people, it shouldn’t keep us expats from making local bonds, as the whole experience of living in another country is so much richer with the knowledge that host country friends and neighbors can provide.

So, is there a cure for the expat bug?  I’m in my sixth decade, living in an adopted country, married to a French woman, with a dozen countries I’ve called home, and the siren song of foreign fields still beckons.  Is that living the dream or postponing reality?  Not sure, but it’s in my blood.

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A Country Is a Terrible Thing To Waste

Apologies to the Ad Council and the United Negro College Fund for my deforming their long running "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Waste" ad campaign.  But the sentiment fits my message.

Further mea culpas to nationalists in both the United States and Belgium for what I'm about to do.  But I care deeply about both countries, being a citizen of the former and a resident of the latter.  Both have the potential to be greater than their current national selves, and both are suffering from an institutional malaise that causes the national machinery to break down - literally, in the tragic case of the train accident this week outside Brussels.

Just keep the trains from hitting each other

How so, you may ask?  As soon as news of a head on collision between two commuter trains hit the press, questions started to be raised: was this another example of linguistic confusion between traffic controllers?  Was this a "black day for Flanders," the scene of the accident, as the head of the Dutch-speaking region said?  No, not just Flanders, for there were probably as many or more Francophone wallons on the trains, part of the massive daily national exchange of populations across the "linguistic frontier."  But everything in Belgium is eventually linked to the thorny linguistic community question.

If anything, the breakup of the national train service into several entities, with crucial responsibility for infrastructure and security spun off to a company that holds no responsibility for making the trains run on time, is probably at the root of the problem.  But the political finagling underlying the breakup of something that had been a coherent whole is apparent: the newspaper photo captions identifying the supposedly technocratic bosses of the several entities that comprise the Belgian train system carried the political affiliations of each.  They are party creatures, carefully selected to reflect the correct ideological and linguistic balance.  But can they run trains?

Governments are supposed to govern, no?

Across the pond, meanwhile, political science dictionary writers are going to have to come up with a new term that goes beyond gridlock.  Terminal hold?   Rigor senatis?  Fili-busted?  Republicans appear to only know how to say no, and Democrats appear unable to understand that more than fifty percent of anything is a majority.

Blame games are for losers, and as Democrats and Republicans trade charges over their collective inability and/or unwillingness to get a move on, the Chinese, who have neither Republicans or Democrats but just Commie-capitalists, get to play Monopoly by themselves.  Monopoly over much of the world's industrial production and creditor to their biggest customer for cheap goods, the United States.

This, and the long term standing of the world's oldest democracy is what our elected officials should be dealing with.

With Belgium's regional and linguistic tensions always present in debate on the future of the country, the threat of division is never far away.  The "Belgian compromise" is legendary in Europe, where at the 11th hour a Belgian middle way is found to save the EU deliberations on sometimes obscure issues.  But domestically, this compromise has tended to compromise chances for good governance.  Cutting the train system into parts, insisting on a four-lane highway because the other region has one, proliferating parliaments to create jobs for politicians - you can compromise your way into a dysfunctional state.  Remember, Solomon only threatened to cut the baby in half.

In the US, at least no one other than a few fringe Republicans is calling for the breakup of the union.  Nostalgic for "American empire?"  We need to be taken down a peg or two if we think we can continue indefinitely in our unsustainably wasteful, greedy, consumerist ways.  But American democracy is quite another thing.  If today's politicians so disgust the citizenry that voters leave the business of elections and elective office to the crazy fringe, then the world will have lost very much indeed.

A country is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Les Barons - Nabil Ben Yadir

Driving a BMW While Arab...

... is no problem in downtown Dubai, where wealthy Arabs own the place, and driving anything less flashy would be suspect.

In Brussels, however, where Arabes are largely relegated to buses and the metro, people might get the impression that the car's either been stolen or bought through drug deals.  This cliché-overturning image is at the heart of Nabil Ben Yadir's understated comedy.

In the case of "Les Barons" (official site), this group of mostly unemployed guys from the "ghetto" (variously known in French as le quartier or la zone) just want to show off and pick up girls.  So they've chipped in with 8 unequal shares from their welfare allowances or black market jobs to buy the upmarket car.

This good-hearted story of underdogs who might just do well was not the broad, obvious comedy that we sort of expected to see.  Much of the humor consists of inside jokes, often dealing with the delicate territory of relations between first and second generation Moroccan Belgians, whose parents have high hopes for them to follow in their footsteps: blue collar job security, filial loyalty, semi-arranged marriage followed by grandchildren.

But what if you want to be a standup comedian?  Is browbeaten Hassan, played with subtle grace by Nader Boussandel, going to stick with his dreams or obey his father, a salt-of-the-earth immigrant who wants his son to get an honest job?

Some of the brothers and sisters from the hood do well, especially Malika, Hassan's childhood sweetheart who now presents the evening TV news.  The impossible dream?  Well, not really: here in Belgium, both of the main francophone channels' TV news programs are anchored by women of maghrebi origin.

Director Nabil Ben Yadir has fun with other insider references, both to films and to Belgium's complex mix of languages, ethnicity, and regions.   His casting of veteran Flemish actor Jan Decleir (star of the excellent 2003 thriller The Alzheimer Case) is a nice touch: here he plays greengrocer Lucien, whose vegetable stalls make a nice lounge for our Barons with time on their hands.  This time, it's not Alzheimer's but Parkinson's disease that afflicts the actor.

Likewise, Baron-wannabe Franck is played by non-Arab Julien Courbey, who wanted to be an Algerian in the 2005 comedy Il était une fois dans l'oued.  Poor Franck, he just wants some "respect" from his maghrebi friends, but it's just like Steve Buscemi's hangdog "Donny" in The Big Lebowski - everything he says is dissed.

Les Barons comes at an interesting time, when Belgian media are contrasting the relatively benign (or at least laissez-faire) attitude of Brussels' francophones on the question of urban security with an alarmist (some might say racist) view among many in the country's Dutch-speaking Flemish majority.  In truth, as a 2008 article showed in Le Monde Diplomatique, many of the young immigrant-origin Belgians - even though born and raised in the country - are "foreigners inside their own city" and rarely leave le quartier.

This is also Nabil Ben Yadir's own story - he knows how difficult it is to take that step away from the confines of the urban immigrant ghetto: "If you leave le quartier, it's a bit like treason... the first step is complicated... for me, it was making my first feature film."  Read his entire interview here (.pdf, in French).

Ben Yadir's first step is no baby step.  This is a very subtle, funny, and touching film.  One that deserves wider international distribution than it's likely to get as "the first comedy on Belgium's immigrant neighborhoods."

(Poster from Films.ma)