Month: August 2015

German Cultural Leadership: the Eternal Oxymoron (October 19, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Last Sunday while perusing the web, I stumbled across the following headline:

Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101017/wl_afp/germanymuslimreligionimmigration

Completely aghast, yet not quite sure I hadn’t accidentally clicked on a link to The Onion, the ribald, satiric publication disguised as news, I continued reading – then immediately wished I hadn’t.

Full disclosure: my genetic heritage is all Axis power – roughly half and half German and Italian. As a child learning for the first time about WWI and WWII, my Germanic self became increasingly uncomfortable with its identity. Over and again it seemed that Germany sought to place itself on the center of the world stage, not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that. I simply began to take issue with the rampant genocide that always seemed to accompany these operations. At the conclusion of every major war, Germany would be put in its place, paying reparations and performing social penance for its bad behavior, but somehow it seemed that the nation and its dark side always found a way to rebound. Somewhere not very deep within my psyche, I was never able to forgive my ancestors for the Holocaust, no matter how the nation progressed afterward.

But last Sunday, I suddenly found myself wondering if Germany has advanced at all in social understanding. For reasons I cannot fathom, it is perfectly acceptable for Chancellor Angela Merkel to stand up and public and share the following assessment of her nation’s residents:

“Multikulti”, the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.

“This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values.

“We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here,” said the chancellor.

“Subsidising immigrants” isn’t sufficient, Germany has the right to “make demands” on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe.

For a brief moment, I felt I had been sucker punched in the gut. What year is this again? I realize that the United States, with its racial divides and recent declarations of war upon the homosexual and Muslim communities, hardly seems like a beacon of tolerance, but the kind of rhetoric above is typically left to the fringe elements of the land. It’s just not cool to be a bigot, even less so to be one that represents an entire nation politically and militarily.

Take note non-German speaking Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists and Jews: you have been warned to read the Bible, speak Deutsch, and if you can manage it, look whitish, or else ye are unwelcome. As an English speaking Hindu convert with questions about religion as a whole, I wonder if I would be acceptable in the Motherland, my ethnicity notwithstanding. Probably not. I am too multi-cultural, and thus a failure, like more than half of the human population.

This is a slippery slope. Where does Chancellor Merkel draw the line? Unfortunately, that is a question that has been posed to German leaders on and off for centuries, and the response has often been devastating. In times of economic and social crisis, it is the human tendency to blame shift, to identify as “other” people and places less understood, in the quest to find meaning for the suffering we see around us. But our challenge as humans is too look beyond our most basic and fearful instincts, to transcend the local and embrace the universal as a basic method of propagating the species. We are six billion strong and show no signs of slowing our growth. At a certain point, if we’re going to live together, we have to learn to get along. Angela Merkel has no authority to declare the effort a failure.

Entrepreneurs: Killing Them Softly (October 16, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

closed-742070

A couple of nights ago, I looked out the window of my fifth floor apartment and witnessed a tragedy in progress. It is not the kind of catastrophe that comes with a lot of noise, or drama or any sort of sensual spectacle at all. Instead it was quiet, methodical and efficient. I was watching the death of a dream, the heartbreak of failed entrepreneurship, as the purveyor of a neighborhood women’s clothing store cleaned out her inventory, decor and signage.

This particular store addressed a specific need in feminine American fashion: the ability to fit almost any size woman, from 1-22. While the small store may not always have your particular number in stock, the owner, a friendly middle-aged African American woman, would have it shipped for arrival within three business days at no extra charge.

Therein lies some additional causes for the deep sense of loss to the small business community created by this outlet’s foreclosure. For a variety of sociopolitical reasons, there are already not enough minority female job and capital creators out there. It is disheartening to see another one go.

And this comes at a time when the street I live on is witnessing a boom of sorts. I have been a resident for six months but within a few blocks radius during that same period, a number of bars, restaurants and entertainment venues have sprung. But maybe that’s the problem. As my community slowly gentrifies, these burgeoning businesses scream “More!” More lights, more glass, more steel, more white collar transplants looking for the coolest nightspot. This understated, individual shop which purposely targeted clients of diverse economic backgrounds, may be the first casualty of many to come.

For some reason, this affects me in a far more terrified and profoundly sad way then the loss of my own job earlier this week. Because I feel a definite connection with this closure. It’s just not a good climate for the hard working and unassuming to get ahead, is it? I can and will get another job, even if it takes awhile and a boatload of rejection. But small business owners, in many cases, pour everything into their work: their money, their time, their energy and their faith. While the practical concerns of resolving loose ends and securing a new income must necessarily take the foreground, the sickness at heart that I felt while watching the owner cover her once vibrant windows with old newsprint must pale in comparison to the emotional roller coaster this woman is riding.

I don’t buy into the widely pushed tenet that President Obama is “hostile” to business. I feel like vomiting every time I hear a Fortune 500 company, with its record 2010 profits while much of the nation languishes in unemployed dire straits, say otherwise. However, by and large, I readily agree with bi-partisan opinions that not nearly enough has been done for the small business community. Credit can be nearly impossible to come by. The costs of health care make the hiring of full-time workers economically risky and burdensome. A sputtering economy limits the disposable income people have for goods and services. In short, small business is getting squeezed from all sides. What is the answer?

I am not an economist and I am sure the solutions are multi-layered and complex, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to try. For too long I have carried the sunken stone feeling in my gut that America is losing – and losing big – in important areas: infrastructure improvement, job creation, clean energy, immigration and education among many others. However, too many of us, so disillusioned, so busy trying to survive, don’t have the luxury of pointing to an act of American Dream destruction, to take the time to say, “Hey! See that? That’s wrong. We need to do something”

I may be but a modestly read blogger, but that’s the least I can do for this woman, who is now trying to sort out what comes next in a cold market. I saw it. I saw you. It was wrong. Your business was important: to you, the neighborhood and to me.

A Worker’s Withdrawal: Day 1 (October 14, 2010)

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premature withdrawal stock market wall street

Yesterday was my last day at my full-time job and I am setting about the Herculean task of trying to deprogram myself. If you read this post I wrote late last month, then you are aware of the complete mind fuckery that has had me in a vise-like grip for endless weeks. Six months ago, I accepted a “standard” administrative position at a non-profit, whose human service advocacy work I completely support. A struggling writer needs a paycheck after all, and I calculated that I could work my 8:30 to 5 with plenty of bandwidth left to focus on freelance writing projects.

I had everything right, except the part about “standard” office responsibility and the energy left to focus on my authorial goals. The Boss turned out to be a real piece of mercurial work. Note to self: never accept a position where you are only one of two total employees, and the other holds all the cards. I need not restate the mental abuse I encountered because frankly, I don’t have the energy. Suffice it to say the Miranda character in The Devil Wears Prada would have to get a lot more creative in ways to crush one’s self-esteem while simultaneously squeezing every drop of available talent that $35,000 a year can buy.

But it’s over now. The Boss had a temporary worker sitting in my chair, answering my phone and checking my email account, as I arrived for my last day of work. Of course she didn’t warn me this would happen. That would have taken all the fun out of seeing the look of shocked embarrassment on my face. Is there any clearer visual message that I am disposable and can be replaced? I think that idea had already been driven home when I was told I was being “transitioned” right before The Boss jetted off for a two week African safari, fully expecting that I would stay and hold the place down (maddeningly, she was perfectly right). The Boss preceded to spend the rest of the day conducting phone interviews for my permanent replacement, making sure to tell every candidate what a “big mess” she had on her hands with the last person who filled the role (um, I am right here?). She did not thank me as I traipsed out at 4:30, or even acknowledge that I was leaving. Of course by this point, I know better than to expect courtesy from The Boss, yet a part of me was still hurt once more.

As I biked the 11 miles home from the office, feeling every bit the used up, sacked loser, I told myself mentally that I had to find a way out of this Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I had spent six months working through lunches, coming in early, staying late and answering emails on the weekends. I had done a terrific job and I knew it. I received several calls from appalled board members yesterday, asking what The Boss was thinking (your guess is as good as mine friends) and wishing me well in the next phase of my life. I am a wife, a sister, an aunt, a friend, and dammit yes, a writer. Was I really going to let The Boss make me forget that? Was I going to give her the satisfaction of making me feel like an abject failure?

Apparently, the answer was a resounding “yes”, because there I was later that night, sobbing, feeling lost, asking my husband Eddie why he even stays with a no-income waste of space such as myself. What after all, is the difference between me and my mentally ill father, who has always struggled to hold down regular employment and never appears to have a direction? Most of my life, I have been Miss Overachiever, but here I am at age 32 staring down the barrel of malfunction and obscurity. This was not supposed to happen to me.

A now former colleague of mine warned me that I would get over the depression and find my way back to anger, where I was a couple weeks ago while The Boss was in-flight somewhere over Tanzania. I hope that stage of grief arrives sooner rather than later. I know that beating myself up is the height of counterproductivity, but I can’t seem to shake the temptation at the moment.

Anonymous in the Information Age (October 9, 2010)

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101009/ap_on_re_us/us1984_abduction_arrest

The story above, about a 32 year-old Nevada woman who only discovered her real name after applying for a marriage license, breaks my heart. If the defendant in the case, Melissa Reed’s mother, is to be believed – and the article suggests she should – mother and daughter were forced into obscurity while fleeing a violent and abusive ex-husband. Living a lie to protect your family must be an unendurable experience, and I am sorry for all parties.

However, the part of the piece which amazes me is the following quote from Ms. Reed: “”I learned the reason that for all these years I have not had a proper ID or valid Social Security number for `Melissa Reed’ and why I could not get a driver’s license, bank account, passport or travel by plane, all because of my assumed name.”

How does a 32 year-old get to this stage of life without any of the conventions of modern American citizenry? Did she never work, never vote, drive or venture anywhere at all? It seems to me that the only way a person could accomplish this is through an acute case of agoraphobia.

I would think that somewhere along the way, this state of affairs had to raise a red flag for Melissa. She was six years old when she disappeared with her mother, according to the report. I would never suggest relying on the memory of a young child 26 years later to put together a case, but she really doesn’t recall anything? I am not bragging, but I can tell you what my favorite songs were at the age of two (for the record, there were three of them: “Ride Like the Wind,” “Xanadu,” and “Celebration”) not because I was told by my parents, but because of my vivid recollections of rocking out.

The Reeds are entangled in a huge legal mess at the moment, and the 57 year-old mother is looking at jail time. Once they sort that out, they have another challenge: years of therapy to process it all.

Beating Them Off With a Stick (October 7, 2010)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

homer

A very close friend of mine, whose identity I will protect in order to spare potential damage to his momentum, is absolutely cleaning up in the world of online dating. Mr. Anonymous, a late fortysomething, recently divorced father of three, is the hottest ticket in town these days. He is presently juggling not one, two or three but 12 potential love matches. He recently sent me an email stating rather humbly, “I never got this much action in my 20s and 30s.”

What is the key to Mr. A’s success? Quite simply he is a good father, a homeowner and has a stable job. Apparently, the pool of single men in their late 40s looks more like a cesspool to the eligible women of a certain age. By comparison, Mr. A is a rock star.

This got me thinking on two different planes. In the first place I feel a tremendous amount of empathy for the worthy single, grown and serious women out there. Apparently, it really is THAT bad. But in the second place, this vicarious travel down the road of dating with Mr. A made it suddenly clear that the things we think are important in a partner when we are in our 20s and 30s may be a red herring after all.

I work with a tremendously fabulous woman in her early 60s. Linda is a grandmother to two beautiful little girls and enjoys a wonderful relationship with her only daughter and son-in-law. Linda works, goes on trips with her girlfriends and has so many hobbies and enjoyments in life. She is quite satisfied overall but has intimated more than once that she wouldn’t mind sharing all this joy with a good man. Linda got pregnant at the age of 19, and though her husband “did the right thing” (it was the late 1960s after all) and married her, she knows that he never loved her. Less than five years later, he was off with a new woman to start a new family. She has had some dates and a few crushes in the ensuing years, but nothing ever took.

Linda told me that as a girl she had a male friend who was slavishly devoted to her, and probably a part of him remains so. But she blew him off – many times. He wasn’t attractive enough, was a bit too much of a “momma’s boy,” and in general, failed to curl Linda’s toes. However during our conversation, after relaying that her ex-husband eventually cut off contact with his immediate family and the child he had with his first wife, she realized all too late that “a family man is the worthiest man of all.”

When I used to lie awake at night in high school, dreaming of the future husband who would “save” me from my unhappy home, he used to bear an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt from the movie Legends of the Fall. He was brooding, a tough read and our imaginary romance was oh so torrid. Once I had ventured out into the real world and got myself burned by a few bad boys, I realized that the Marlon Brandos of the universe, no matter how sexy, would never be the key to long-term happiness.

Further evidence that youth is wasted on the young. When we’re at our strongest, most healthy and promising, we want the things that can’t be right, valuing the wrong qualities in the wrong people. When we’re older, wiser and life is more complicated, we realize, sometimes all too tardy, that a little reliability might have done a world of good.

Mr. Anonymous is a great catch – a funny, loyal and worthy man. The final scene in his romantic comedy remains to be written. Here’s hoping he and Ms. Right (whichever of the 12 she may be) find their happy ending.