A Culture of Civility on our Streets

I tried to make a case for licensing bicycles, a practice more and more states and cities are adopting, in the following letter published recently in the Register-Guard.  I have come to the view that only the threat of withdrawing the privilege of cycling on our paths and streets will change scofflaw behavior. 

“I watched two bicyclists breeze through three red lights in downtown Eugene yesterday afternoon, an infraction I see all too frequently.  So I, an avid cyclist, support Marlene Cook’s letter of August 21 calling for the licensing of bicycles but for different reasons.  In addition to supporting the maintenance of Eugene’s bicycle network, license fees could have the following additional benefits:     

Licensing could be done in a manner (embossing the license number on the bottom of the frame) to make is easier to track and recover stolen bicycles

Fees could pay for the production and distribution of a booklet distributed at licensing that would explain the rules of the road and common courtesies for cyclists too rarely observed in Eugene. 

Repeated serious infractions (running red lights) would be cause for suspending the license.  

Such a program would contribute to the safety of cyclists and calm the nerves of those who fear a deadly collision with scofflaw cyclists on our streets.    The bikes of cyclists 12 years old and younger would not require licenses.  Students would pay only half of whatever fees are charged.  

It’s also time to remove the option of bike riding on sidewalks in areas of the city heavily used by pedestrians.  The greatest danger to us pedestrians in the Midtown and Downtown zones of South Eugene is not automobiles.  It is….cyclists.” 

Why I Gave Up Hunting

The following letter, published by the Register-Guard, in 2013,  is still relevant in my opinion

I follow the hunting debate with interest.  In Ohio, in the l940s, shot guns were plugged to allow three shots.  After three misses, the game deserved a walk.  Quail were song birds, not hunted.  I recently wrote the following memoir of this hunter at age 14.         

“Eventually the rabbit circled around, as they always do, towards his burrow.  I saw him running up along the ridge of a meadow some 30 yards away. I quickly raised my shotgun and fired without thinking at all.  The rabbit tumbled.   I ran over to him, surprised to have made such a good shot, my heart beating wildly."    

"He lay entirely still and was looking directly at me with large brown fearful eyes.  He was exhausted from running, his small body steaming in the cold.  His gentle warm eyes were so familiar.  I could feel the pulsing of his body in mine.  I knew what I been taught to do, however much I dreaded doing it. I took his hind legs in my hand, placed my booted foot gently on his head and pulled, amazed at how easily his lower body separated from his head. Tufts of gray fur with speckles of blood in them made a ring around his neck.  I carried his headless body by the hind legs to my father who placed the decapitated rabbit in a pouch around the back of his khaki hunting coat. 

             

“Well done, son.” Father said.  “That was a good shot.”    

I never hunted again.”

MEMORIES OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT BUSH

This is a memoir piece I wrote years ago and now remember these events fondly on the death of President  Bush

                    ENCOUNTERS WITH PRESIDENT BUSH

       When on home tours in America I lived a mere block from the C and O Canal in Cabin John, Maryland.  One afternoon in the early autumn of 1981 I returned from work and invited my son Michael to join me in a run along the canal tow path. As we ran from 81^st Street down to and along the canal path we heard:

“Molly?  Molly?  Where are you, Molly?”  As we walked on, the voice, which sounded distressed, continued to call, Molly?  Molly?  Come, Molly, come.

Suddenly a figure I immediately recognized approached us.  Behind him were two men on mountain bikes in dark suits with those funny Secret Service wires in their ears.  The figure was Vice President Bush.  Then I noticed there were two more SS agents up the tow path in front of him.  As he continued to call for Molly,  he suddenly turned back down the tow path as he and the secret service agents continued to call for Molly (you will want to know this) which they eventually found. 

Michael and I continued on our walk up the tow path and as we did I thought to myself,  isn’t it wonderful that the former head of the CIA and the vice-president of the most powerful nation in the world would show so much concern for the family dog?  Actually it shouldn’t have amazed me at all.  Our public officials are also human beings who make their pets members of the family as many of us do. 

Such encounters with well know public political figures were fairly common in the Washington area when I lived there. Later, at Ft. McNair where I did an academic year at the War College in l982-83, I watched New York Marathon winner Alberto Salazar and vice-president Bush run a few laps together around Ft. McNair's track. 

          My next encounter with now President Bush was involvement in his visit to Australia.  Such a possibility was first mentioned in l988.  In 1990 President Bush called Australia's Prime Minister Bob Hawke and told Hawke he would be coming later that year. 

          In July of l991 my designated deputy Ray Burson called me while I was visiting my sister in Ohio, to say the White House had announced the trip for later in the year.  I was glad for the challenge, glad I had the seasoned, steady, pro Ray Burson as my deputy.  I was pleased to have such advance notice and would begin to staff out and plan visit support in August. I thought this would make the Coral Sea commemorations less important to the ambassador. It would also be  a good challenge other than Coral Sea,  which did not entirely enchant me.

          In September I went to Townsville in north Queensland to pre-advance for the Bush visit because we had been told the president would enjoy one day of bill fishing.  I chose an outfit that arranged such adventures. They took me out in their boat to show how they would manage a trip for a senior American official. (I could not say the senior official was the president.)  They said they would treat me as the senior official and show me what they could do.  So I was given the privilege of hauling in the first strike.  A tuna took the bait fish, about 12 inches long, dressed in a pink plastic collar and skimming along the surface of the water only about 30 yards behind the boat.  In saltwater, the boat's crew told me, the noise of the boat attracts rather than frightens the fish.   The tuna gave me a terrific fight for half an hour, running out again and again towards the horizon.  I finally pulled it alongside and one of the crew of five gill gaffed it and lifted it into the boat.  I think I was nearly as exhausted as the fish.  It was such a beautiful blue and silver creature that I regretted I was involved in taking its life.  As it turned out, the president did not go bill fishing. 

In December, l991, in my annual year end letter to family and friends I wrote:

“Some of you may have read that George and Barbara Bush are dropping in to spend New Year's Eve with us.  It will be just like old times with George and Barbara arriving in their own 747 accompanied by 250 White House aides.  They have all been invited to come along to do the New Year Down Under and on their trail will be over 200 White House journalists who have chartered their own 747 to join the party.  George has asked me to “do something” with the press. 

          We are not yet sure that 747s can land at Canberra's modest airport, which is only the first of a series of possible complications that only you who have worked in embassies abroad can fully appreciate.  But matching White House expectations with local realities should be easier here than in most nations in the world.” 

          Then we were told the visit was postponed and probably would be canceled.   You could reasonably have expected me to feel relief.  But I had put so much of myself into gathering and organizing staff and resources and preparing for the visit that the cancellation deflated me.  Plus there were two events, one the launching of a new national Australian center for American studies and the other the opening of the American gallery in the National Maritime Museum in which I had played a major role, start to finish.  Nothing could promote the success of these projects more than being formally opened by an American president. 

          Then we were told the visit was on again and I wrote in my journal that despite the on again off again confusions,  the visit should go well.  I was at the peak of my effectiveness in Australia, was consulted by everyone from the ambassador on down, and had begun to feel like the embassy's historian, the one who always knew how it was done the last time.  I wanted this visit for our bilateral relations with Australia and for my officers and staff.  And for me.  These last months of my tour will include a presidential visit and the 50^th Coral Sea commemorations.  That is a fine ending to my four years in Australia. 

December 1991 notes from my journal weeks before President Bush arrives.       

 In Sydney, after three days with a White House advance team, I lay on the point of Mrs. Macquarie's chair, a lovely park that reaches into Sydney's harbor.  The first governor's wife used to sit at that spot at the end of the l8^th Century.  A soft breeze comes off the harbor as the ferry boats go to and fro.  A splendid view of downtown Sydney and the opera house and the bridge.  I lay there for an hour like a wounded animal, exhausted, trying to recover.  Is it my age? 

          I walked by the Fleet Steps and read the memorial where Elizabeth II first put her foot on Australian soil in l954 and then walked to Lord Nelson's Pub in the Rocks. This is the Lord Nelson l8^th Century pub Dan Quayle dropped into when he visited Australia in l989.  One of their offerings is now Quayle Ale.  The White House staff wants Bush to do a pub stop.  

          We stand between the White House and the prime minister's office.  The language is English but nonetheless we are interpreters, explaining the habits and practices of one to the other. 

          I learned at 9 am this morning that the Bush visit has been shifted at Australia's initiative to begin on New Year's Eve in Sydney with fireworks and to end in Melbourne.  I think this will be a much better program for Australia, for the Australian and American media and almost surely for the President and his party.  There have been so many shifts in his program that that we have now adjusted to adjusting. 

          There is unhappiness in my office because of the schedule change.  I managed to get one exception to the “no leaves” policy for a marriage in the US.  Otherwise I refused leaves to everyone.

          The advance crew from the White House seems a nice bunch and I now believe that the fundamentals (services, space, personnel, policies) are in place for this visit and that they look good.  We have had some shifts this week, especially with the change in Australian prime ministers (Bob Hawke to Paul Keating). Now comes the endless detail and rehearsal of details that makes the difference between excellence and disaster; there seems to be no middle ground in these matters.

          President and Barbara Bush were great ambassadors for the US, a big hit.  He was the first American president to visit our ally Down Under in 25 years.  But I will always cherish the memory of his humanity during the minutes I heard him trying to find his lost puppy.   When he did not know anyone else other than his security detail was listening.    

THE ROLE OF THE ARTS IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

I had the great good fortune to attend an Ohio University-sponsored elementary school, Rufus Putnam, that emphasized creativity, especially in the arts and in science.  Some parents in the city school system made disparaging comments about the academic program at Putnam, usually complaining there was too little emphasis on the three Rs rather than saying there was too much emphasis on literature, music, and art.  

But Putnam students did well in the city high school when they arrived there, and I––and surely others–––missed the environment of encouragement, the permission to integrate my personal interests into the program, the emphasis on creativity in the arts and in science, and the study of foreign countries and cultures that Rufus Putnam provided.  

Putnam creative arts programs also contributed to our mental health.  I was one of four abused and neglected children saved through a remarkable adoption. The arts programs of Putnam played an important role in our emotional healing. 

A fuller description of this amazing school can be found in Book One of Children of the Manse.  

SING OUT OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM

Sing Out!

Rather than a flag in the lapel, I suggest a better test of patriotism would be learning the words of our national anthem and singing this hymn to the nation from our hearts at public events.

What I hear, instead, at sports events is a single vocalist performing while the rest of us mumble in near silence.   

There are more and more important evidences of our love of country but learning and singing the words of our national anthem would be a good beginning.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD AMBASSADOR?

           Good ambassadors have a large capacity for human relationships, can give a finished speech or media interview at a minute's notice and on any occasion, can inspire the work and loyalty of embassy officers and staff.  They should also have excellent digestion. 

          The ambassador is Mr. or Ms. Outside.  The Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), almost always a career Foreign Service Officer, is Mr. or Ms. Inside. DCMs assure the smooth functioning of the entire mission and deal with internal problems that do not require the ambassador's attention.  The DCM drafts the efficiency reports of the other senior embassy officers which the ambassador then reviews.

          Of the many fine ambassadors I worked for, I found two outstanding.  One was a career Foreign Service Officer, the other a political appointee.  The worst ambassador I worked under was also a political appointee.  In general, I have no objection to politically appointed ambassadors if they have experience in managing a team in a complex organization, are politically savvy, know something about the history and political culture of the country to which they have been sent, and have at least a minimal professional level in the local language.  A previous connection to the country in question can be helpful but is not necessary.               

GIVE AUDIBLE WARNING, CYCLISTS!

A back operation turned this cyclist into a pedestrian who walks with sticks.  To enjoy the beauty of the river paths, I began walking from the Campbell Center to the Rose Garden. In five walks to the Rose Garden and back, not one cyclist of dozens — NOT ONE— gave me an audible warning. Their reaction when I shouted, “Give warning” was a look of confusion to raising a middle finger towards the sky.  Year by year in the 23 years I have cycled in Eugene, fewer and fewer cyclists give any warning they are passing.  Something must be done to change this! I suggest a modest education program as follows. 

Plaster new yellow signs along the river trails that read, 

 “Cyclists, you are required by common courtesy to issue an audible warning whenever passing another cyclist or pedestrian.” 

I applaud the plan to create a two-way bike lane along High Street.  I and others began proposing that a decade ago as well as what I call “safe connectors” that would link all our bike paths in the Eugene-Springfield area. What I don’t applaud is that it will be at least 2020 before that project is completed.  Why?  Funding that depends on grants, the city says.  It is not a matter of money.  The city has enough money for such a relatively modest project.  It is priorities.  It is past due time this project was begun. 

FOSTER CARE;WHAT ARE WE DOING WRONG/?

When I became a volunteer CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) I was surprised to learn that most children in the foster care system eventually repeat the histories of their failed parents.  Even more surprising, many social welfare professionals expect them to do so.  I found such pessimism difficult to understand, I suppose, because I was a foster care child with a different history. 

My biological father, from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, dropped out of school in the 4^th grade.    From ages 14 to 31 he was out of prison only long enough to sire five children.   His younger brother and sister also spent time in the Ohio criminal justice system.  My biological mother was from a working-class family and dropped out of high school in the l0th grade.  In addition to me and my three siblings, four of our cousins ended up in the county orphanage.  

Did I or did my siblings repeat the failed histories of our inadequate parents?  Not one member of my family, my three siblings, our nine children, or our 13 grandchildren has ever been arrested or ever been in foster care.  Of our nine children eight earned college degrees, six earned graduate and professional degrees.  Our experience suggests that under the right conditions, the same or similar genes can lead to dramatically different results.

The right conditions for us are described in the second half of my first book, Children of the Manse.  I compare our lives before and after we arrived at the manse (the Luchs residence) in a chapter called “The Honeymoon.”  

“We had never been in such comfortable, spacious surroundings, eaten such good food, or slept in such pleasant rooms or beds. We had privacy for the first time I could remember, and our own closets and dresser drawers for our new clothes and new shoes. We could talk at meals in our turn and, incredibly, second helpings of food were available just for asking. We had a bathtub where, if we wished, we could bathe alone rather than having to stand in group showers as at the children’s home. Our lives were suddenly full of excitement and beauty — carpentry tools, whole rooms and boxes full of books, field trips to the country and free and noisy romps through the woods, music lessons, a delightful neighborhood of people and buildings to meet and explore, a large back yard to play in, and a friendly red-brick school on a university campus three blocks away. We were beginning to make new friends. While unending tedium filled our hours at the children’s home, we were now involved in a stimulating round of activities that never seemed to end. Janey would later sum up our first years in the manse and the surrounding neighborhood with, ‘What an exciting place to be a child!’”

I describe how Evelyn Luchs (our foster mother) restored our physical health and took on the much more difficult challenge of repairing our psychological health.  If I were designing a home for neglected foster children, I can hardly imagine a better environment than Fred and Evelyn Luchs provided for the four of us. 

Unfortunately, there are not enough foster moms with the qualities and background (a teacher trainer who had studied psychology) of an Evelyn Luchs.  The reality appears to be that the adopters in our society today are from the upper middle class, want babies, and often look abroad to find them.  Most foster care, however devoted, is not provided by that segment of our society.  There seems to be growing consensus that as currently designed, a troublesome percentage of foster care is failing.

          Alternatives for Placing Abused Children   

If we were doing it right, there would be different kinds of placements for children in foster care.   I paint a grim picture of county orphanages in Children of the Manse.  It might surprise my readers that for some children I could recommend a children’s home.   I have read memoirs of graduates of children’s homes, mostly supported by religious organizations, with highly trained personnel, small living units, nutritious and abundant food, excellent sports training facilities and first-class medical care --- everything my county orphanage lacked.   I think an ideal children’s home for some children would resemble a residential boarding school.  Moreover, I believe there are children who would respond well to residence in a residential military school. 

My point is we ought to fit the program to the child’s personality and needs and not place all children in the only model of foster care we seem to have.   If this proposal seems too expensive, our current foster care system is also expensive, and the total cost to society of not breaking the chain of failed life histories from generation to generation is surely even more so. 

ANOTHER IRONY IN US IMMIGRATION LaW

The following Letter to the Editor was sent to but not published by the Register-Guard

To the Editor:

O me, o my!  Irony upon irony!  The press is now criticizing President Trump for using the “chain migration” he has abhorred to make US citizens of his wife’s parents.  What the journalists who write such stories apparently do not understand is that, in its odd way, the Trump use of family unification fulfills the intent of the original legislation.  The original purpose of the law was to encourage the additional immigration of Europeans by admitting the relatives of those already here.  But not to encourage the “huddled masses” from Asia and Africa who had not yet begun to arrive in significant numbers.  When the Europeans did not come, eventually a single African or Asian could achieve citizenship and begin a chain to unite his family.   

Thus, in an ironic twist, the Trump family is fulfilling the original intent of the legislation.  Racist?  Yes, racist and hard to understand for those who believe our “golden door” has always been open to the “tired and poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

The door was open.  But only to Europeans.  

THE 14th AMENDMENT AND "'BIRTH RIGHT CITIZENSHIP"

I have yet to see an account in the media of the origins of what is now being called “birth right citizenship.” The 14^th amendment was passed for one reason and one reason only: to grant citizenship to former slaves. Once they were made citizens, it should have been repealed.   

          The 14^th amendment did NOT intend to grant citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants on the simple basis of having been born on US territory.   I have served in US embassies that deal with these issues.  

          In this case, Trump is right. If the 14^th amendment cannot be repealed (it should be), I think an executive action to nullify it is justified and long overdue.

          The problems and conflicts we are having today over immigration policies are the result of decades of ignorance and inattention.   

I LEARN I AM DOOMED

While one book in my father’s study, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, relieved one of my anxieties and had a positive effect on my development, there were other of his books I explored that had their darker side.  That was particularly true of two books by specialists in child development.  In bold black and white they wrote that any child who was seriously abused and neglected up to the age of eight was doomed. I was exactly eight years old when I and three younger siblings were adopted by Fred and Evelyn Luchs, a young Presbyterian minister, and his wife.  All four of us had hidden histories of serious neglect and abuse.  Here I was, six years later at age fourteen, reading that I was doomed, that my dreams were never to be realized. This information came to me in authoritative black and white type written by authors with impressive credentials in the field of child development.

          There was, the psychologists observed, no possibility such a child could recover his emotional health and live a normal life.  He would be frequently depressed. His chances of a happy marriage were nil.  He would likely follow in the footsteps of his closest biological relatives.   If they were alcoholics, so would he be.  My biological father was an alcoholic.  If they became criminals, so would he.  My father, one uncle and one aunt were at various times locked up in the prisons of the state of Ohio. Furthermore, such a boy had little chance of  succeeding in a career.          

          I immediately fell into a depression.  How could I, at age 14. stand up against the verdict of such professionals?  What I read so depressed me I did not even want to turn for help to my wise and sympathetic adoptive mother.  I was afraid she would believe the psychologists.  I did not want her to know that their verdict was I was doomed.     

          My depression lasted for about three weeks.  Then, I became defiant. I rejected the verdict of the psychologists and–– most important of all–– I said to myself, “I am going to prove they are wrong!”  I was not saying I did not have a battle overcoming my anger because of the way I and my younger siblings had been treated by our biological relatives.  To this day I have a strong startle reflex, a certain sign of physical child abuse, and I have some terrible nightmares.  I am not saying that I was not sometimes depressed or that I was not an unusually sensitive child.  I was all of those.

          But the predictions of the child development specialists turned out to be wrong.  I was blest with a happy 30- year marriage.  My career? I passed a rigorous Foreign Service exam and became an American diplomat.  I served for 30 years with honor and was promoted to the senior ranks of the Foreign Service.  Not a single member of my own family (four sons and nine grandchildren) has ever been arrested or been in foster care.  One brother did become an alcoholic but joined AAA and had his last drink in his mid- 30s.  

           

Why I Cancelled my Subscription to the Register-Guard

To the Editor:

          A full seven weeks ago I cancelled my subscription to the Register-Guard and am still waiting for a $300 refund. It was not an easy decision for this subscriber of nearly a quarter of a century.  I made the decision thoughtfully, not because I was upset, though I don’t like what I see coming for this once friendly hometown newspaper.  

          I have been there before.  My family-owned hometown newspaper in Ohio was purchased by corporate interests and within three years, a respectable journal became something a bright 8^th grader could edit. 

          But, specifically, why did I cancel my subscription?   The first reason has nothing to do with the new ownership.  I found reading the paper every morning depressing. I cannot remember a time when there was such rancor, such meanness, in our national politics. At the state level, the PERS scandal continues.  The legislators who control the system are participants in this generous retirement program and, therefore, have no reason to reform it.  At the local level, the issue of a new city hall is as far from being resolved as it was years ago when I and others pushed for an easy solution: the EWEB building, That option  is even more attractive now that the area adjacent to the EWEB building will be developed into a highly attractive riverfront space.

          Yet another reason I cancelled the Register-Guard was the decision to sharply reduce the space allotted for letters to the editor.  That was an important community forum and, yes –– all the letters focused on Trump began to bore–– but surely an editor could have controlled that by choosing which letters to print.    

          Yet another reason to cancel my subscription was the decision to eliminate the weekly review section.  Yes, there are other sources for such thought pieces.  I subscribe to half a dozen of them. But how many R-G readers are likely to subscribe to other sources?  I would add that that section of the paper could have been made much more interesting.  The message I got from the closure was we are not interested in readers who think.

          That I have had to wait seven weeks for a refund of $300 seems to confirm the rightness of my decision to cancel.  I have called the circulation department twice and left an email once that should have evoked some response but did not.  l think the warm and friendly circulation staff, when under the former local management of the old Register-Guard, would have been more responsive.   And I would have had my refund weeks before now.  

CHOPIN"S FINAL DAYS

My first piano recital piece—I was 9 years old—was Chopin's prelude in C# minor, Opus 28, No.7 When I returned to the formal study of the piano in retirement I kept running into Chopin.  The first time was during the marvelous 2000 exhibit, "Piano 300," on the history of the piano at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. which I explored three times in as many days.  Among so many other treasures in that exhibit were compositions, some in their own hand, some by copyists, of Mozart, Liszt, Haydn, Gershwin, and Chopin.  The most beautiful handwriting of all was Chopin's.  Each page of his composition on display, the Impromptu in G flat major, op 51, was a work of art.         

          I began reading biographies of Chopin, the best of which I found to be Siepmann’s Chopin, the Reluctant Romantic. The book was so good I read it twice and the second time made many notes.  But it was mostly in Paris, the city in which he spent much of his short life, that I kept running into Frederick Francois Chopin. I sought out and visited his residences, including the one on the Place Vendome near my office where he died.  I ran into Chopin again as I walked above the quays of the Left Bank.  I looked up at the delicate steeple of Saint Chapelle and up river to a clear view of Notre Dame in the near distance.  Crowds of tourists milled around the green stalls of book and print vendors, babbling in many languages, taking pleasure in the warmth and sunlight and the boats and the architectural beauty of the grand buildings along the Seine.  Sunlight flooded the western tip of the island that is in the heart of Paris, the Isle de la Cite.

          I looked for Chopin portraits and books among the stalls. =I was below the Pont Neuf Bridge and not far from the Place St. Michel.  A vendor in his late 40s with a full but neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard had just finished unloading the contents of the green metal box that held his wares and was fussing over their arrangement.  Propped up in front of rows of his old books was a full-length portrait, not more than seven inches tall.  It had the greenish tints found in some old daguerreotypes and was clearly authentic 19th Century. The face looked familiar.  "Chopin," the vendor said.  He was now standing beside me.

"A daguerreotype.  Taken in 1849, a few weeks before he died at age 39."  

          In the photo Chopin is in the final stages of tuberculosis.  It wasn't any Chopin I had ever seen, certainly not the young, frail handsome romantic. He looked old and tired, with dark circles under his eyes. He seemed to be barely holding on to life and perhaps was surprised at what the disease was doing to his body.  Death, I thought, already has her arms around him.  Perhaps the vendor saw the dismay in my face.

"Look at his eyes." he said.  "Look at the soul in his eyes and he hummed a brief passage from one of Chopin's works.  Such beauty!"       

          But I saw pain where the vendor saw beauty in the face of the man who composed such exquisite music.  I walked away but I could not forget that portrait as I sat in a cafe on Place St. Michel with an espresso coffee, thinking about the photo.  I liked it very much, I said to myself, and it is not expensive.  But could I live with it?  I finally decided no, I could not.   

          Chopin requested Mozart's requiem mass be performed at his funeral service.  The funeral was delayed because there were major parts for female voices in Mozart's mass and the Madeleine had never permitted female singers in its choir.  The church relented on the condition that the women would be invisible behind a black velvet curtain.   Also played at his funeral were Chopin's preludes Opus 28, No 4 in E minor and No 6 in B minor, both mournful keys.   Chopin's funeral was the first public funeral in the temple built by Napoleon as a monument to his victorious armies that later became a church, the Madeleine.  Thousands followed the Chopin funeral cortege, walking from the Madeleine to Pere Lachaise cemetery where he was buried. 

     For some months I walked frequently from my office across the northern edge of the  Place de la Concorde and up the rue Royale to the Madeleine.  I walked through bouquets of flowers on the lower steps and trotted up into the church almost every day to spend a few minutes remembering Chopin and my French assistant, Anne Marie-Migeot.  For two and one half years Anne-Marie and I were the USIS Paris support for our regional offices in the major consular cities in France.  We had endured much frustration in a poorly organized USIS program together.  Anne-Marie died at 47, quite unexpectedly, while visiting her brother in Brazil. While at the beach.  A blood clot on the brain.  Anne-Marie occasionally complained of migraine headaches but there were no other symptoms or warning signs.  We were all in shock.  Anne-Marie's funeral mass was held at the Madeleine. Gabriel Faure's much-loved requiem was first performed in the Madeleine for a funeral mass in l888 and he became the organist at that church from 1896 to 1905. 

          

OUR OWN SEPARATED CHILDREN

There has been a great deal of criticism of the Trump administration’s former practice of separating the children of would be immigrants from their parents.  Perhaps a thousand children were so affected.  The outcry was strong enough that under public pressure, the policy was cancelled.     

          What has caused little or no public outcry at all is the daily separation of American children from parents who are incarcerated.  The numbers are staggering.  Not a thousand or so, but five million children, all US citizens, have had a parent in state or federal prison at some time in their childhood.

          In some cases, the second parent, grandparents, or other relatives take them in.  But most of these children are put into some form of foster care. 

          These separations from a loved parent are terribly painful. I know that because I was such a child, and I wrote about my experience in my first book, Children of the Manse.   

Children of the Manse, p 43

          “Lonnie was arrested again following a break-in of a local liquor store. I remember the day we were taken to see Janey (new born sister) and our mother at Mercy Hospital in Portsmouth.  I best remember the occasion because I got to see my Daddy again.  He gave me and Brother and Charlie sticks of Wrigley’s chewing gum in light green paper wrappers.  He was with a sheriff’s deputy to whom he was handcuffed.

          When the visit was over we all walked out of the hospital together and I saw the black sheriff’s car and two more deputies who would take Lonnie back to jail and then to the Ohio state prison. He tried to hug me but couldn’t because of the handcuffs.  When he looked up at the deputy, asking to be freed for a moment to hold me, the deputy shook his head.  They opened the car door so my Daddy could get in and he sat between two men in suits and fedoras and they sped away.  I can’t forget seeing him like that, being driven away with his head down.  My Aunt Mary told me I came running into my Grandmother McNelly’s house afterwards crying, “Grandma!  Grandma!  They took my Daddy to jail.  They took my Daddy to jail! I believed, said Aunt Mary, my Grandmother McNelly could do something about it.  All I knew was the joy of my heart was gone and Aunt Mary said I cried inconsolably long into the night.  Nothing my grandmother or Aunt Mary said or did could help me.” 

          I was five years old, the worst time say the psychologists, to be separated from a loved parent. In my case, Lonnie was the parent I loved because he loved me and my biological mother was a selfish and cold woman who would eventually beg state social workers to place me and three younger siblings in a county children’s home. 

RENOIR'S NUDES

When I lived in Paris in the late l970s, the Impressionist museum was across the street from my office in the Talleyrand building.  During a later visit to Paris  I was disappointed to find the entire Impressionist collection had been moved to the fourth floor of the new Musee d’Orsay.  That was in effect moving them to the attic of what was once a handsome Parisian railway station. But it has always been  how the French treat the Impressionists. Formerly the Impressionists were not allowed into the Louvre Palace Museum proper but were relegated to an outbuilding, the royal tennis court, which was why I could walk across the street at will to view them.  

          Even so, I was delighted to view the paintings again on whatever floor they were and in 2000 spent an entire day roaming through the impressionist galleries in a half empty museum during a sunny weekday in late winter.  When I came to the Renoirs I stood for some time in front of one of the best of his 1918 painting of young bathers, Les Grandes Baigneuses.  Two plump, lovely, nude young women, lie next to each other, relaxing after their bath.  The painting is full of warm dreamy oranges, yellows, and greens.  

          In the background, as I circled the gallery of Renoir’s canvasses, I could hear a group of school girls, laughing, exuberant and joyful.  The first two, smiling dark-haired girls in blue skirts and white blouses, danced into the Renoir gallery.  They stepped up to Les Grandes Baigneuses and inspected the two young women closely. Suddenly one, in glee, turned to her companion and said,

"Look!  There are three! she said pointing at the bottom bather."

Then she walked up to the painting, dragging her companion by the hand,

"One," and she pointed to the bather’s right breast.  "Two," and she pointed to the bather's left breast.  "And three,” she said triumphantly, pointing to the bather's right elbow.   And, as in one of those geometric figures in psychology books used to teach us about perception, it was possible, looked at in a certain way, that the elbow could be seen as the bather's third breast.  After a moment of observation her companion agreed with her.  There were indeed three.  These two turned back to the next two girls in blue and white who had just entered the room, and announced with excitement,

"Look!  There are three!”

Then the first girl again walked up to the painting, and said, 

"One," and she pointed to the bather’s right breast.  "Two," and she pointed to the bather's left breast.  "And three,' she said triumphantly, pointing to the bather's right elbow."   Influenced by the excited enthusiasm of the first two girls, the second pair of school girls immediately agreed.  Indeed, this young woman in the painting had three breasts and wasn't that fun! 

So, this group of four ran back to drag the rest of their classmates and their teacher into the gallery to show them this amazing discovery.

Soon I heard a chorus of "Oui, Oui!  Il y en a trois!"  "Yes, yes, there are three."

It was obvious to the half-dozen of us who had been watching this little drama that things had gone too far for correction by the time their mother goose, a teacher plump like Renoir's bathers and wearing dark rimmed glasses, entered the gallery. She was trying to hush the girls who by now were gathered in a group in front of painting, commenting, tittering, all fascinated to see A nude woman with three breasts.

"Oh, no, no, there are not three," I heard the teacher say.  “There are only two.  What you are calling the third brest is her elbow.   Can't you see?” 

          The teacher blushed as she looked around at the other adults in the gallery who were now as interested in the reaction of the children to Renoir's painting as the children were in this unusual piece of art.   

After a few more attempts to demonstrate there were not three breasts in Renoir’s e painting, but only two, the teacher gave a Gallic shrug as her charges danced happily into the next gallery.  As they moved on we could hear the teacher still trying to hush them and the girls still twittering, still pleased with their surprise discovery.  

 

 

    

BARBERS ABROAD

I recently timed a female barber who cut my hair.  Five minutes, 10 seconds.  A record.   All through the years, reaching back over half a century, having my hair cut required at least 20 minutes and sometimes half an hour.  Then when unisex barber shops arrived, old fashion males-only barber shops began to disappear and 20- minute haircuts went with them.  Well, I guess some folks reckon a five- minute hair cut is progress.  But I don’t.

          Today’s five- minute haircuts in unisex shops make me nostalgic for the barber shops of my youth when the barber began with clippers and trimmed his work with scissors. Then he applied lather from a shaving mug and shaved your neck with a straight razor. The barber cocked the razor in one hand to begin shaving.  Then he wiped off his work with a hot towel.   

          Ahhh!  The warmth of the next step, a second hot towel, was most pleasant against my neck, a mildly sensual experience.  Often a gentle shoulder massage was included. Eyebrows and ear hairs were trimmed and a moustache or beard if you had one.  It was a relaxing and delightful experience, having someone fuss over my hair. In those days such shops were as much a territory of males only as was the local beauty sop the territory of women.  But women could enter if with their small sons. On those rare occasions when women were present, the sounds of the conversation would hush, and it was sometimes necessary to change the subject.  When I began to grow a beard, a shave with more lather and more hot towels was even more relaxing.   Then there were the ointments and the pungent lotions, which were probably not necessary or even healthy but nice none the less.  Yes, I miss all that. 

          Now I have just described an old-time American haircut.  But when I became a diplomat and began to travel around the world I found there were barbers and haircuts that were quite different from those in the US. Even so, haircuts abroad were mostly an occasion to look forward to, a too-brief 30 minutes of luxury and pleasure.

          At one extreme I have sat in the shade of a mango tree in open African markets for a barber working with the old-fashioned hand clips and a pair of scissors.   Not an altogether pleasant experience but it did have one plus.  Those haircuts cost me a British shilling, at the time worth about 14 US cents. 

          At the other extreme I have been coiffed by a lovely young woman in a unisex parlor near my office on the rue du Faubourg St. Honoree in the upscale 8^th arrondissement in Paris.  I was never able to find a proper barber shop in Paris, so I had ended up in a fancy French salon where “haircuts” lasted an hour and cost the equivalent of 60 US dollars.  The process began with a shampoo by a pretty assistant of the coiffeuse who pulled my head back into a large semi-circle stainless steel receptacle and gently messaged my scalp.  It ended as my hair was blown dry and somehow given body and a shape not its own.   I was quite handsome at the end of all that….for 24 hours.  

          One of the best haircuts I ever had was in an ultramodern, air-conditioned Portuguese shop in Beira, Mozambique.   I had arrived by freighter a couple of days before and settled into a pension called the Gato Noir (Black Cat). All the streets in the center of the city had been dug up and were open as workers replaced an ancient sewer system.  At that time Beira was surely the most foul-smelling city on the planet and it was in this very modern Portuguese barbershop that I sought temporary relief. The Portuguese barbers were highly skilled, but I suspect what has planted that haircut firmly in my mind is the rank smell of the city’s open sewers.

          The Chinese barbers in a shop I favored near our embassy in Singapore were skilled but unremarkable, perhaps because haircuts in Singapore were much like those in the US in the l940s and 50s, as also were those in Canberra, Australia. 

          If I were to choose my favorite barber I would select a shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  That barber -- he was a one-man shop -- was from northern India. He used only hand tools, not an electric clipper, and worked slowly and carefully.  Once he was happy with what he had done and had my approval, he rubbed a delightful smelling unguent around my neck and over my face.  Then he messaged my shoulders and upper back.  Then…the first time he did this I could not believe what he was doing…he began firmly beating the center of my upper back with the edge of his hands and descended my back, disc by disc. Because I had been suffering from lower back pain for some months my first reaction was, Oh, No!  But I did not try to stop him. When he was done I realized that my back felt better than it had in many months and I continued to go to his shop for haircuts and the service of what I came to think of as a skilled chiropractor during the remainder of my four-year tour in Malaysia.