Election Daze

Today my fellow Americans will go to the polls in midterm elections. Just two days ago, Ukrainians also voted in their midterm elections, and early results suggest that the ruling party of President Yankovich handily consolidated its power. But, nearly every person I know in Ukraine will tell you that he's an idiot, a puppet to Moscow, and so far has been a terrible president. So why did his group win?

Here, it comes down to simple power. People here don't believe for a second that the government actually represents the people or that the promises politicians make have any meaning. Those who vote for the party in power seek to improve their personal relative position of power. That's it. And it doesn't work very well for the country, as anyone who has spent time in Ukraine can attest.

But is America any different? Yes, in very important but sad ways. It appears that conservatives are likely to gain significant numbers of seats in the house and senate today, but not because those voting are looking to curry favor with the authorities. Rather, they seem to believe the bullshit flowing out of the conservative crowd -- tea partiers in particular -- that somehow American government is out of control and we have only to reign in the wasteful spending to make government smaller, better, and more favorable to individual liberty. Any Ukrainian would laugh at this naivety.

Let's look at some hard facts. The federal budget for 2010 will spend about $3.7 billion. They will take in about $2.2 billion in taxes, leaving a gap of $1.5 billion to create a balanced budget. Is this irresponsible? I think that's not an easy question -- we have an historic recession and are fighting two wars overseas -- but conservatives have seized on eliminating the deficit as a key goal of responsible government. So let's look at how they want to do it.

Nobody will touch government payments to senior citizens in the form of social security or Medicare. This is $1.2 trillion a year right now. Neither will they compromise our "national security" but cutting defense spending, which is another $895 billion. And here's where the reality of governance gets difficult, something most politicians don't want to talk about until AFTER the election. Throw in the small amount of spending on police services, and you end up with $2.34 trillion in federal spending on the things that conservatives see as sacred cows.

So to balance the budget, we have to eliminate EVERYTHING else -- welfare programs for the poor, all funding for education, all funding for the government itself (yes, that means our president on down must work for free, without offices or staff or money to pay for photocopies and mailing). We can't repair our roads, or regulate any businesses, or pay the interest on the debt that has been accumulated during the long Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We can't fund any research outside of defense. We can't regulate pollution. We can't do a lot of things. And we still would need to cut $176 billion from those sacred cows just to make for a balanced budget.

Now, this approach is overly generous to conservatives, because they also want to reduce taxes as well, making the $2.2 billion in federal revenue even smaller.

But such realities of government don't concern the people these days. They want simple answers because the economy sucks and too many don't have jobs or don't make what they used to. Unfortunately, though, simple answers are not available in complex times. When America is most in need of pragmatists, people willing to do the hard work of democracy (i.e. compromise, balance priorities, and work together), we are going to elect a bunch of sound-bite-spewing ideologues who will only hasten America's ongoing decline.

At least Ukrainians know what's up with their politicians. Will Americans ever learn?

Good People

It has been some time since I've posted. And that's because I've been incredibly busy the past couple of months trying to open an English Language school here in Kharkov. It has been rewarding, frustrating, and educational.

The thing that strikes me most is how similar people are everywhere: They are happy to help when it is theoretical. They are happy to help when it isn't actually required. But when push comes to shove, as they say, you are alone to scrape the ugly green wallpaper off the walls, to find your clients, to fund your school. I expected nothing more. I do come from America, after all, the land of self-preservation and primacy of personal interests.

But I do admit to hoping for a bit more, now and then. Scratch the heart of a cynic, they say, and you'll find an idealist...that's me to a tee. Ah, well.... I am still surviving, still struggling, still trying to make something happen. But it can't last forever. If this doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do next.

I desperately want to believe that people are good in their hearts. It is just that times like these try my faith....

Facebook and Dislocation

My 25th high school reunion will be in August, and this has sparked a flurry of new Facebook friends, some of whom I remember well and others who I am not sure who they even are! They change their names, their pictures look different (after all, 25 years is a long time), and so I am modestly reconnecting with a lot of people I haven't seen or heard from since graduation.

In many ways, it feels good to reconnect. I knew some very nice people in high school, and I'm proud to see how well so many have done over the years. Yet, at the same time, it really drives home a point that I have felt a lot: My life choices and maybe my priorities are quite different than most of my old peers.

I am living in a country where there is almost no rule of law, rampant corruption, a very foreign language that I don't speak very well, and a history and culture vastly divergent from the one in Waverly, Iowa, of my youth. My classmates are successful business people, artists, mothers, and fathers. They have full lives. I'm not jealous or anything like that, but I am happy for those who also seem to be happy. It's just that I can't imagine still living in Iowa, working for some software company or a manufacturer or owning a shop in the myriad towns of the state.

And I imagine they look at my life--if they even bother--and wonder what the hell I did to get exiled to someplace like Ukraine. Or maybe they imagine some kind of ex-pat utopia. Of course, Kharkov is neither Siberia or utopia. It is full of people struggling to get by, in difficult circumstances, just like everywhere else. There are really wonderful people here--more wonderful people than I have met in a long time--and of course the bastards and bitches and shallow, selfish individuals that are a part of any society. But one thing is sure: After six months, I feel that my life is more full here than it had been in the states for many years. I'm still trying to sort out why.

So if any of my former classmates read this, know that I miss a good pizza at the OP, I still mourn the loss of the Villager cheeseburgers (and Roy's Place, for that matter), but otherwise, it isn't really so different anywhere.

Travels in Eastern Europe

The strangeness began as soon as I exited the airport. I asked, in English, "Where is the bus to Krakow?" and the man responded in English. That was the strange part...someone who understood me in my native tongue. 

But it didn't end there. Everywhere I went in Poland, people spoke English! The travel agent at the bus depot, the clerk at the KFC, the hotel receptionist, the bar men, the taxi drivers, the shop clerks. And I could eat food that felt like home...particularly the ice-laden diet pepsis that I got at KFC from the fountain dispenser. Yes, Krakow felt like heaven for a day and a half. I breathed in the American-ness of it all, at cheeseburgers and drank ice-cold sodas from the fountain, and spoke to everybody in English. 

Not to mention that it was a beautiful city, full of history and charm and lovely, polite, and friendly locals interested in making sure I had a nice time in their city. I saw where the old Polish kings roamed around, imagined the royalty frolicking on the grass that was too precious today to even set foot on, and admired the tourist traps of bronzed or silver-colored human mannequins representing the history of this country. 

Of course, Poland was more than pleasant. It was a country which survived communist rule with its history intact, a country which has rebounded into a western-styled democracy and capitalist system bereft of the corruption of Ukraine, and a country which has real promise in achieving the kind of status that Ukraine can only dream of. 

But still, after 28 hours of travel when I arrived back in Kharkov, there was something comforting about the taxi driver who tried to cheat me out of 20 Hrivna and still couldn't speak a lick of English, the run-down apartments, the dirty streets, and the general confusion of a country which doesn't know whether it wants to be Eastern or Western in outlook. Somehow, for me, Ukraine is a kind of Motherland, one which I am happy to represent, almost as much as I am proud to represent America, despite all its flaws. 

The Neighbor Across the Hall

She leaned her stocky body against the door frame, blue eyes cold and fierce, cursing me in Russian for being a bad neighbor, a terrible American. She told me I should go home, that I don’t belong in Ukraine. She didn’t tell me her name. 

It wasn’t the first time my neighbors showed me just how much they didn’t want me in their building. I had misbehaved that weekend; a poker night with the guys had gotten a little rowdy too late in the evening. So, in retribution a few days later, my upstairs neighbor, Victor, had changed the code on the front door of my building so that I couldn’t get in. He wanted $100 as a “fine” before he would allow me back into my own apartment building. He wore his thinning, gray hair in the military style and had the stance of a boxer, always in perfect balance. After a brief argument that evening which began with me apologizing for being too loud that night and ended in him shoving me out of the doorway and slamming the heavy metal door in my face, I met him again in the morning, this time with a lawyer, interpreter, and a couple of friends. And he brought the neighbor across the hall from me. She was in her 60s, had short, frosted blonde hair, a nasty scowl, and had that authoritative babushka voice that demanded your attention. 

After several more apologies, I eventually made it back into my apartment that day, but ever since I have had the distinct feeling of not being wanted in my building. I’m still not quiet enough for them, or maybe just not Ukrainian or Russian enough. It’s hard to say exactly. Every night when I push the buttons to unlock the door outside my hallway, I get a little nervous that I might not be able to open the door. I shut the doors as quietly as possible, don’t play music or watch much TV, and I rarely have anyone over. 

Today, I returned from teaching to see something strange in the hall, a flower bouquet on a stand in the stairwell between my flat and my neighbor’s. I couldn’t quite make out the writing, but it sure looked to me like a funeral wreath. Was my evil bitch of a neighbor dead? I couldn’t say I minded the idea. 

I went to my balcony for some fresh air this afternoon and noticed some chairs and people gathering together in the alley behind my building. It was sunny but cool, and there were maybe 20 people out there, unusual in both their number and their appearance. I had no idea how the possible funeral could be associated with this, but I looked up the local traditions online and discovered that there are often one or two panachydy, or memorial services, held prior to the funeral. Maybe this was one? 

I haven’t seen a dead body in a long time. I don’t like funerals, and prefer to remember people who have died as they exist in my memory, alive and talking and moving around. But I looked out the window today and saw him on a platform covered in flowers in the middle of the alley, surrounded by fifty or sixty people. The man had the thin, gaunt look that every corpse has. His skin was yellow, his mouth frowning, and a white strip of cloth covered his forehead. And the fierce, mean neighbor woman, in a black dress and shawl, stood over him, crying. She stood there for fifteen minutes. Friends came up and put an arm around her shoulder. A large man in a pinstriped suit placed another bouquet of red roses at his feet. A young man, crying, kissed the deceased man’s cheek. Finally, my neighbor bent over the body, kissed him, and stepped back. The body was whisked into a waiting van, the top of the coffin was set over him, and the flowers were gently set on top of the coffin. 

I stopped by a Ukrainian cemetery recently on a break between teaching. It doesn’t look much like an American graveyard. Each family plot is fenced off, and the plots usually have not just the grave makers (with an etching or photo of the person buried beneath) but also a bench, or chairs, and a table. It was warm, the newly budding trees swayed in the breeze, and old women kneeled in the grass, planting flowers around the graves. I like cemeteries, somehow. They feel peaceful. They are usually quiet, solitary places where I can clear my head. It feels like history, thinking of all the people who have come before me, about how they lived and died in pretty much the same way I do--struggling with bills and relationships and careers and family--and they are all peacefully at rest now. But this cemetery felt different, more alive. I asked a Ukrainian friend about the benches and chairs and tables one day, and he explained that family members routinely visit the graves of their relatives, not just on holidays, not just on the anniversaries of their passing (which they do every year), but also the wives of these deceased men will come by any old afternoon just to sit.

“And on anniversaries, you can find his drinking buddies draining a few bottles of vodka with him,” my friend said. “It’s kind of a party.”

Within a few minutes of the funeral van driving off, the alley was empty again, except for a worker at the pizza place next door out on a cigarette break and a stray dog searching for food. I don’t know my neighbor, saw her husband only once, but I want to tell her something: I am sorry for your loss. As awful stares at me and spoke to me, I feel bad about disrupting her life by moving into this building. In forty days, she will visit the grave because this is the amount of time in Ukrainian folklore it takes for a person to truly pass on. I can imagine her planting flowers, pulling weeds, and wiping the granite tombstone on some sunny spring day, and I know she feels loss. I saw her face today, exhausted, pale, frowning, and I am ashamed of myself. 

The World of Ideas

I've been reading a collection of essays this week by the great New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell called "What the Dog Saw." What I love about these essays is how they spark my thinking. There are essays about the poetry of human motion, a profile of Ron Popeil, the phenomenon of late bloomers and the trouble of catastrophe thinking.

What it gives me is a renewed love of ideas and how they can be sparked through writing. I've already come up with a new idea for an essay and it has helped me work through some ideas on my still-unfinished novel.

It also makes me remember that even though I live abroad, I can't quit the habits that I love back home and I shouldn't use the confusion and difficulty of living in Unkraine as an excuse to quit trying. This essay about late bloomers--how some artists become successful late in life because of the way they approach their art rather than because of their lack of talent--gives me some faith that I shouldn't quit, either. Thanks, Malcolm.

Where did I go?

Yes, it has been more than a month since I last posted, and I thought I should at least explain why for anyone who has bothered to follow the blog. The simple answer is this: I've been too busy living.

For the past few years, it felt like my life was on hold, like I was waiting for something good to happen to me. Now, I did make efforts to achieve this, but my daily life was drudgery at best and torture at worst. But since I have arrived in Ukraine, I feel alive again. I am busy. I am meeting people every day. I am learning the culture and language of this strange country. And so, all I can say is, I've been busy.

A few weeks ago, I saw an amazing fusion jazz performance by a Georgian woman named Nino Katamadze and her band Insight. Energetic, beautiful, and totally satisfying. I went to midnight services for the Orthodox Easter, where you stand for up to four hours listening to the service in Old Slavonic and then wait for your basket of Easter bread and food to be blessed by the priests after the service. I can't say it felt particularly sanctified, what with the high heels and mini skirts, but the sheer numbers of people at the various churches we visited (there were six or seven...I lost count) was amazing. I rolled home at 4:30 in the morning, totally exhausted.

And the people....the amazing people. Shashlik and banya with my football fan friends on the outskirts of town (their version of barbecue); hanging with some amazing graphic artists late into the night; drinking vodka with a couple of great Iraqi guys, one of whom was actually shot during a firefight in the war and who still is as nice to me as my best friends back home.

I'll try to be better about finding time to update the blog. But in the meantime, know that I'm busy living.