October 2008 Archives

As we wrapped up a two-month fellowship, my fellow fellows gave me and Andras the worst possible job: to see each one of them go. Strangely, I was the first one to arrive for the programme and almost the last one to leave. It was heart-rending. It was strange to see all of us packed up to go home.

 

Then there hugs, tears, final goodbyes and promises to visit each other. As I hugged Ermin and Vyk I realised that now all of us have eight homes in eight different countries. I had never imagined that I would know someone from Bosnia or have finger-licking Lithuanian food in Chicago or learn some Spanish from an Argentinian or teach swear words to a fifth-generation Indian from South Africa.

 

With these thoughts I bid farewell to my first room mate Sonia. Then I took my husband around the lakes. Somehow everyone seemed to look or sound like or just reminded me of the rest of the gang. It almost seemed like entire Minneapolis decided to go bald and look like Ermin or iron their hair poker straight like Antoinette. And it was at Lake Calhoun that suddenly I heard someone calling my name. There was Sonia riding a bike. Just three hours after I had said my final goodbye to her. Just when I was feeling bad that I would never ever be able to see anyone ever again. Just when I was wondering if my new friends would ever visit my country or not.

 

As Sonia and I hugged again a hope was rekindled. Maybe in some city of the world, somewhere sometime I hear someone calling out my name and I am pleasantly surprised to see you again. Goodbye and good luck my friends. See you soon.

 

 

 

 

It was one of those early mornings when you need a shot of caffeine to get your bearings right. And it was then that my Brazilian friend Tatiana threw a question at the group: "So what do you miss the most?" This was over a month back and we had spent almost two weeks away from home.

 

My instant reaction was: "Food." Tati said food and music. Always-measured and the GPS of the group Vyk predictably said "nothing". And the ever-charming Ermin floored us as he said: "Of course my wife and my dog." And thats when I said: "Oh correction. Of course my husband too."

 

That was then. After four weeks of travel all over the US, the group is back home in Minneapolis. My husband joined me here yesterday. While I was waiting for him at the hotel I realised I was happy-sad. I was very happy and looking forward to seeing him. But then very sad that the programme would come to an end soon. Very soon. Just tomorrow.

 

So Tati right now I miss nothing. I don't miss home because I think I am quite at home in Minneapolis.

Forget about the Congress authorizing the "big government" to bail out the Wall Street.

Forget about the "big government" spying on its own citizens under the Patriot act.

Forget even about Mike Huckabee accusing Barack Obama of promoting the ultimate threat that comes from Europe: "big government", grabbing liberty and destroying America's achievements.

The surest sign of the big government is nailed to the wall of the passageway leading to the Oak Street Beach in Chicago.

Warning that the beach is closed when there is no lifeguard on duty (it isn't: happy moms take their kids to the lake in the moonlight and companies of youngsters drink merrily) it asks the citizens to report other - disobeying - citizens to the police.

For all its liberties, this country seems obsessed with signs ordering people what to do and not. Just look at the abundance of excessive announcements.

This big government is patronizing its citizens like few others, and people do not seem to care.

Signs above traffic lights in New York tell drivers not to "block the box", as if anyone really did not know it was wrong. Announcements on Chicago trains ask riders to "keep your belongings off the seat next to you so that others may sit down", as if anyone would not know that in a packed train people are to be preferred to bags. Museum halls and restaurants display warnings on the number of people inside a room that is "dangerous and unlawful", as if customers would count the ones who are already in before entering.

No other Western country, with a possible exception of Britain, also prolific in signs, does not seem to mistrust the intelligence and goodwill of its citizens as does America. (In fact, some European countries even remove traffic signs making drivers think and thus reducing the number of accidents.)

And there is a good reason, of course. For all the innovative spirit, for all the critical thinking encouraged in schools and for the record number of Nobel prize winners, probably every foreigner has countless anecdotes to tell how clueless Americans can be when they are faced with situations that are only slightly outside the bounds of everyday routines.

Even my most favorite ones would take countless pages to tell.

So there it is, the big government, the force for good, the all-predicting guardian of order, taking care of everything in a very public way, allowing people to go about their affairs. A homo no longer needs to be much sapiens.

Of course, everybody sticking to one's own business might explain the legendary efficiency of the country where the conveyor belt was invented. But it also might explain legendary ignorance.

And a dangerous one at that.

The 9-11 terrorists breached this big government precisely because of their imagination and thinking outside the box. The government answer was, of course, more signs and more instructions what to do and what not.

But in New York's La Guardia airport the other week, I witnessed how a security officer seemed to blindly follow the rules and thus failed to check an object large enough to hide ten machine guns.

I did not say anything - there was no sign asking me to.

There are museums of probably everything in the world, but the one on the main street in Chicago, the Freedom Museum, claims to be the first museum in the US dedicated to freedom.

But exhibit after exhibit there show, ironically, how freedom has been attempted to be suppressed, and how controversial freedom can be in a country that thinks of itself as a beacon of the free world.

A very troubling thing is that some exhibits are very recent.

But even more troubling, they show that it is not only the government that seems to have been attempting to suppress freedom in this country from its inception (while claiming, in an orwellian way, to be defending it) - it is countless individuals and groups, the backbone of the American society.

Some are willing to renounce freedoms to win the proverbial "war on terror" (the subtle and not-so-subtle scare-mongering seems to have been successful, after all), some others force songs off the radio stations' playlists because of a single strong word, yet others flood with complaints a major network that has inadvertently shown a nipple, and the fine is imposed, leading to a sort of self-censorship.

Totalitarian trends seem to be very much alive here.

And then there is an even bigger picture.

Try googling a museum of freedom in any other county, and the only small museums of liberty that can be found are dedicated to the wartime liberation of cities such as Cherbourg in France or Bologna in Italy.

Other free countries do not seem to have the need to prove to anyone that they are free. (Much less a need to prescribe freedom to others, but this is another topic altogether.)

Even the biggest freedom controversy of the past decade, the prophet Muhammad cartoon scandal, did not lead to opening museums of freedom in Europe.

Not that other countries did not have historical tensions about freedom, or that they have no current issues, or that freedom should not be actively guarded. It just seems that, for better or worse, freedom by now is taken for granted elsewhere in the free countries just as air - and there seem to be no museums of air anywhere.

Probably it is not a coincidence that the self-described "leader of the free world" is only ranked number 48 in the most recent authoritative press freedom index, below countries like Ghana and Nicaragua, and even this is an improvement over the previous years (the survey, admittedly, is done by a France-based organization; a US-based organization constantly comes up with a different press freedom ranking, and has a different scale of measuring overall freedom).

So maybe that famous inscription in Washington is indeed right: Freedom is not free.

Have you ever been to a soccer stadium in Brazil, to experience one of our most famous derbies? Probably not, I know and I fully understand, once soccer is far from being the favorite sport here in the U.S. But regarding to me, I had the pleasure to watch Chicago White Sox vs. Cleveland Indians at the U.S. Cellular Field last Sunday. And now I'm here to tell you how different things can be between the most famous sport in Brazil and one of most popular sports in the U.S. And believe me: all the differences can go far beyond these games rules.
At a baseball stadium, everything is on set, on the right place. Everybody has their sits (and nobody takes other's place, people are used to do the right thing even if there's no one to check sit's numbers). Minutes after the entire family make themselves comfortable, usually the father goes to some place inside the stadium to buy hot-dogs and sodas. Everything is very organized - even the emotions. In three hours of game, I didn't see anybody so excited that was not able to breath, I didn't see not even one person screaming so loud that could make the person next door about choosing that sit.
And when the game starts, everybody is sitting waiting for their idols catch the ball - ok, not everybody, because some of them spend more time at the gift shops rather than watching the game. But everyone - including those who are in the gift shop - wait, since the very first beginning, for more one victory of their team.
In a soccer game in Brazil, the things can be extremely different. You can smell barbecue two blocks away from the stadium. The main entrance is chaotic, it's really hard to get into the stadium. It's so hard that the feeling is that you are there not only because you paid for, but specially because you deserve to be after all the sacrifice you had to pass through. But do you really think people care about that? It's part of the show, is part of the experience. You can hear the crowds screaming songs about the team, using not just polite words, from miles away and those are the people who couldn't get inside yet.
And finally you get inside the Maracanã Stadium, in Rio. It's not as comfortable or organized as in Chicago. There aren't individual seats, but who cares? The crowd will have 90 minutes of an intense game when people won't seat at all. Almost a hundred thousand people will be singing several songs together, raising their giant flags, taking special part of the show and anxiously hope for the goal. And when it finally comes, I definitely can't describe the feeling. It's something so strong, so huge that nobody can explain how you could keep that inside.
That's the most important difference. It's sociological, it's anthropological, it's about how hard people can get involved with the game. It seems to me that baseball here in the U.S. is a familiar entertainment and it's good the way the things works. But, soccer in Brazil is about passion. To chose and defend a team is more than hopes that it will win the matches. It defines an important part of who you are, it's almost like caring about yourself. A soccer game in Brazil you don't watch, you experience, you live, you surrender and let the magical aura guides your feelings to the edge of the insanity.

That's why it's so unique.

Washington really needs to be fixed. At least one place in the West Wing.

Come to the White House press briefing room - a spot that is on television every day - and just behind the cameras you will find something that will make you believe that both Barack Obama and John Mccain are right: this place needs change.

Someone please clean the spiderwebs between the window glasses.

Tear down this web.

Those thick webs might be a testament of how much of a lame-duck this president has become - not only Congress Republicans feel free to ignore their leader's pleas to approve the financial rescue plan but also the White House-keeping staff seems to ignore the need to let some more light into the building.

Or it might be a subtle reminder by the White House to the press what working conditions they deserve.

Or a statement by the press on what they feel about those eight years.

Or maybe no one cares?

When the reconstruction of the room started some two years ago and the briefing center was relocated across the street, the press felt very unsure if they would be allowed back to the White House grounds. Eventually they were - but now it seems that they were not the only ones who survived the renovation.

True, with the financial crisis, there might be more important things in the White House but wasn't this crisis also hastened by years of neglect on the part of government, among other factors?

Small things sometimes point to bigger things.

Financial markets might eventually be revitalized but is change coming to the White House?

...or a day off the WPI program.

I left all the fun in Chicago and returned back to work - for less than 24 hours, admittedly, and not back to Lithuania but to Washington. But I did what I usually do: covered Lithuanian foreign policy.

It was not the first time Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus met US President George Bush at the White House, and it was not the first time for me to cover the meeting in the Oval Office (well, second...) but it was by far the most important when it came to results. In addition to the now-usual discussion on what to do with Russia, President Bush announced that he "hoped" that from mid-October Lithuanians would be included in a program that allows foreigners to travel to the US for tourism and business without visas. This is what Lithuanian - and EU - diplomacy strived to achieve for many years.

I interviewed President Adamkus after the meeting at the White House lawn for the flagship news at Lithuanian Television (starts at 01:00) - and did that jerky camerawork in the Oval Office.

Barely had we left the White House, it was all back to politics as usual there - Congress throwing out the financial bailout plan, Dow Jones plummeting like never before and a lame-duck president being shunned by his own party...