We Did It Ourselves

It happened again.  I’m frustrated.  I can hear his trumpet.  I know his nick name and I struggle for about eighteen seconds to recall the actual name of the 1930’s, 40's, trumpet player, “Little Jazz.”  I have written about this particular vacuum before.  There is something about his name that is forever slippery.  But per my eighteen second comment, it is not something I’m still vexing on.  After a bit of mental juggling, and quiet hand wringing I was able to clasp the name of Roy Eldridge.  I wouldn't have cared when I was younger, now it feels important not to give up. 

My wife has hosted this event where Roy is on the airwaves.  It’s a lovely theatre where not long ago I saw a fine production of Macbeth, a first for our local community.   Today, my wife has taken the space and is profiling the artistic efforts of many, many mothers in the local community. And she has, consciously or I suspect unconsciously pulled upon the work of the thirties trumpet  player.  And the event is in motion now and I think I’m the only one concentrating on the music.  This is clear, as someone has put the tune on repeat and it is simply looping along, over and over again, which has now begun to annoy me. 

The event though is wonderful.  The ladies put on a play.  My wife plays the grumpy Shandong husband to-a-tee.  She missed her calling as a male chauvinist.  The ladies all seem to have, one after another, a chance to shine, showing their artwork and modeling shawls and discussing contributions to charity.  Proud of my gal.  She’s like the Daoist adage that says: the best leader is the one of whom, when the work is done, people all say, we did it ourselves.

One woman has painted gingko leaves in a lovely manner.  I look closely and I see that she has reproduced the Minoan paintings of Knossos, the princess and the dolphins there, on the leaves and she is surprised that I recognize the source.   She too has taken her kids there for a look and we reminisce for a while about how lovely Crete is.  Her work is accomplished and she is happy to have people considering it, as anyone would. 

There are no other foreigners here.  At least none that look like me.  Once I think I would have been strongly conscious of this, though now it registers as an afterthought.  What’s more noteworthy perhaps is that there are not may men here.  There is one other husband in the audience.  He’s got a young boy in his arms and later I go to talk to him.  We both agree that it is drafty and indeed, uncomfortably cold, the longer we sit here.  His wife has also done a great job today as well, but she is standing across the room in a light dress and I fear she must be freezing. 

Saturday, 12/08/18

In A Better Book

A dear friend of mine had quipped that the only two Revolutions he thought much of were the American Revolution and the Glorious Revolution, which he added, perhaps weren’t really "revolutions" at all.  It struck me that I didn’t really know much about the latter or the two beyond the general time and place.  On my last trip home I sent myself some different titles from Amazon to pick up, including what appeared to be a history of the Glorious Revolution.

And you cannot judge books by covers, let alone jpegs.  This is more of a quick, self-published pamphlet on the Intellectual History of England in the seventeenth century with lots of photos kings and queens and Lord Protectors, with text that isn’t aligned well and folksy asides rather than the academic treatment or at least a readable treatment, I was expecting.  

One epiphany, I hadn’t realized that England changed hands between Catholic and Protestant rulers as many times as it did.  The separation from the Catholic world wasn’t a given after Henry VIII. But his gesture of convenience undeniably became broadly popular, over the century.  Cromwell comes across a murderous, grumpy turd who slaughtered the Irish citizenry after conquering them but later when he defeated the Scots was sparing.  Charles has it rough, after the English Civil Wars and we wonder if he might have come out in one piece, if he hadn't been so quarrelsome.  Why do we not remember his beheading the way we do the one that befell Louis XVI one-hundred-and-fifty years later?  Is the axeman any less dramatic than the Guillotine? 

And the Glorious Revolution itself?  I’m glad it wasn’t particularly violent.  I’m glad Parliament came out ahead and left despotism that much further behind.  I’m glad the daughter Mary and her pal Bill were able to disobey her father in the name of her country.  It must have been the compromised text I was tearing through, but the big GR itself didn’t come across as all that "Glorious."  I suppose it's explanatory powers will need to be gleaned some other time in a better book: how it sired the American Revolution, how it helped England to avoid the excesses of the French Revolution.

Friday, 12/07/18

Rather Suspicious Timing

This arrest of Meng Wanzhou doesn’t sit well with me.  I got an email early in the morning and automatically wrote a friend who works in Huawei to say as much.  I don’t know and we may never know all the details of her relationship with this subsidiary Skycom, and whether she had control over it, whether they willfully sought to deceive HSBC, etc.  and to surreptitiously sell to Iran. 

But potential culpability notwithstanding, we can’t get around the fact that is all rather suspicious timing.  The U.S. Checker Player in Chief has meeting with Xi Jinping in Argentina last week and agrees halt further tariffs, so that the U.S. and China can work through some sort of agreement over the next ninety days.  The following week the daughter of the founder of China’s most successful international organization is detained.  We are all told that Trump didn’t know.  Bolton knew.  That’s reassuring.  

We had one Iran policy under Bush.  We had another policy under Obama and now, still another under Trump.  Sanctions were imposed, sanctions were lifted, and re-imposed.  One might suggest there was at least some ambiguity here on what official U.S. policy was.   Even if the policy was crystal clear and Huawei played in a grey area, the notion that you effectively kidnap someone whom you may or may not choose to release as part of a negotiation strategy seems more like the thuggery we’d expect to see from North Korea.  We’re told that the administration’s right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing and it sounds spurious.  Whether Trump knew or not is immaterial.  This was certainly coordinated, and discussed by people involved in the trade negotiations ahead of time.  To suggest otherwise is an even greater slight of unprofessionalism: how could they not have been aware?

A trade war can easily metastasize into a real war.  This is meant as a deliberate slight to China, certainly.  Huawei may have stolen Cisco code in its early years.  Just like Samsung stole from Toshiba and Toshiba stole from the U.S. and New England stole from old England when it first built a textile industry.  But does anyone really believe Huawei won telco infrastructure bids in the Finland, home of Nokia, and Sweden, home of Ericsson, because they were simply cheaper?  No.  They offered a better all-around solution.  They compete well internationally,  leveraging their home market, just like any American company would, and they have developed their own large IP portfolio which, like Toshiba or Samsung, they too now want to protect.  If we continue to rectify imbalanced trade by seeking to destroy companies, first ZTE and now Huawei, we cede any high ground we may once have had when we say we never use our national intelligence for commercial gain.   It feels like we just hit the accelerator on a race to the bottom. 

Thursday 12/06/18