The SJC post without a joke

I'm thinking a lot about age today. It is (or would have been) my father's hundredth birthday. For all the friction between us--caused entirely by me, which is something for me to live with--I see myself as more and more like him all the time.

Also, I'm trying to shake off the flu, which has me shuffling about the apartment like a nonagenarian. I was feeling half-decent on Saturday, so I did the walking trail--not the running--at the hash, but it turned out to be five-plus miles all the way up and down Namsan, Seoul's most prominent mountain, and by the end I was in a lot more pain than in any of my marathons. Till today, I hadn't taken a shower or shaved in about four days and when I got up in the morning, I looked like a past-sell-date potato. My hair looked as if I'd combed it with a slice of buttered toast.

And there's the possibility that my school will institute the Korean public schools' mandatory retirement age of 62, which would give me two more years, or three, if the rule allows someone to serve a school year started at age 61. Oh. I'd barely thought about this until this moment: if they go by Korean count of age, by which you're one when you're born and age a year every January 1, I'm 61 now. I have no idea what else I could do if I got put out to pasture. My friend Bob, who is three years older, is in the same boat.

I just read a new book entitled Korea: the Impossible Country, which says that having a manager (such as a school owner or principal) who is younger than a subordinate (such as me) makes Koreans very uncomfortable, as it goes against the Confucian-based cultural norm that age equals rank. I don't know if that's involved, but from a business standpoint, why would you get rid of a valued employee because of a number? And, frankly, I've gotten excellent job reviews and was chosen Teacher of the Year by the students. That's just a popularity contest, but... hey, they like me.

The cable's not working, so I've had three and a half days of reeling from the computer chair to the bed to read from a laptop or a Nook or occasionally a retro device I vaguely remember called a book. Bored, bored, bored. And woozy.

But, in the year's weakest segue, I was also reminded today of age in the sense of history. I found the president's inaugural speech very moving, especially when he said:
--
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
-- 
I think it was groundbreaking for the president, at such an event, to remind us all that equal rights are for everyone. I'm neither a woman, nor black, nor gay, but human rights are human rights, and I found that paragraph of the president's--especially "Stonewall"--very inspiring. I think people will watch clips of it in 50 years' time. 

One day at a school in Florida, when I said I thought that gay people deserved to have full equal rights, a student asked, "Did you use to be gay, Mr. Cornman?" I said, "No; Martin Luther King is my hero, but I didn't use to be black."

Remember the first three words in the whole Constitution: "We, the people". All of us.

In living color

The results of the recent US presidential election were a revelation to me, and they completed a shift inside me that had been a long time coming. Romney won a very solid majority of straight white men but Obama won in every other group (blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, Asian-Americans, and on and on...)--and this led to Romney's ending up with 47 percent (ha!) of the vote. And this helped me realize that I'm not a straight white male American, (well, I am, but...) I'm just an American.

And living for four years in a very alien, very similar culture--along with my wide range of friends and acquaintances among foreigners here, and my miscellaneous travels to Taiwan, Denmark, and Germany--helped me realize that I'm not an American, (well, I am, but...) I'm just a human.

And 21 years of being a vegetarian and "animal person", helped me realize that I'm not a human... well, you get it.

But I digress. (Shocker.)

I saw Martin Luther King's famous speech live on TV when I was nine. I watched Alabama police use billy clubs, attack dogs, and fire hoses on peaceful protesters when I was 11. And ever since then I've been for the underdog, the people who are low in the eyes of society. I don't claim any credit for this.

And I don't assign myself any blame for this: I have always, without meaning to, thought of the granting of rights as something "we" did for "them". That is, we white guys should share our perks with everyone because it's the right thing to do; but there was always the "us" who should be magnanimous toward the "them".

But my experiences, and the demographic changes showcased by the election, have finally helped me internalize something:

There is no them; there's just us.

I might have said this for decades now, but now I know it. And my America--I'm coming back someday, although I've never really left--and my world are better in living color.

We couldn't go back to the "traditional" America if we wanted to. And I don't want to. Ever again.

Occupy Earth

I don't usually write very explicitly about politics here; if you know me, you know where my sympathies lie. But now I'm just sickened. The police at Cal Davis (where, incidentally, I lived for a few months, exactly 50 years ago) have sprayed protesters (who were doing nothing more threatening than sitting on the ground with arms linked) directly in the face with pepper spray. A woman protesting in Portland was sprayed point-blank in the mouth. An 84-year-old woman was sprayed in Seattle.

It's nice to see how far our civilization has advanced since the Civil Rights days; in less than fifty years, we've gone from assaulting peaceful protesters with firehoses, billy clubs, and German shepherds to simply attacking them with something that a US Army study concluded can cause "mutagenic effects, carcinogenic effects, sensitization, cardiovascular and pulmonary toxicity, neurotoxicity, as well as possible human fatalities".

I'm so proud: unlike at Kent State and Jackson State when I was a senior in high school, nobody's been killed. Yet.

Personally, I'm completely behind the Occupy movements around the country and the world. We are systematically being ravaged by corporations, banks, and the politicians-- of both parties-- they own. The right-wing cries of "class warfare" are totally true... except it's not the middle class or the poor who have been waging it for all these years.

Call me a socialist if you like. I can take it. Hell, 75 years ago John Steinbeck was called a communist for standing up for migrant workers and working people against the banks and corporations that profited from their misery.

But suppose I'm totally wrong. Suppose corporations (as the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney have said) are people. Suppose the Occupy protesters really are lazy, dirty, communist hippies. Even so, do governments-- do the police-- have the right to assault and hospitalize peaceful protesters? Arrest them for trespassing, put them in jail. They did it to Dr. King. They did it to Nelson Mandela. They did it to Gandhi.

Here in South Korea, which was a draconian police state until the 1980s, every time there's a whiff of protest we see bus after bus after bus of police officers deployed. But in three-plus years, I've never seen anything like what I've seen recently in Davis and Portland and Seattle,,,

in the Land of the Free.

Legends of the fall

Every morning, I wake up, blink blearily two to three hundred times, struggle upright, sometimes easing around Tiki, who's sleeping up against my back under the covers, wade through Tug, who will not stop rubbing against my legs and meowing till I pick him up (and against whom I have to close the bathroom door; invariably I have to reopen it slowly, as it will pass right over his recumbent form), fire up the coffee, fire up the computer, and groggily stare at the screen.

Well, this morning I was greeted by a big scarlet banner on cnn.com: "KOREAN EX-PRESIDENT DIES IN FALL". That is, he fell while hiking in the mountains; it's not a death threat for next September.

I absolutely guarantee that there will be wild rumors swirling. Logic says he probably jumped. (The cops say he left a suicide note, but they have a history of not always telling the truth.) But maybe he just fell. Or... was he pushed? Stories will be spreading quickly, I'm certain; fortunately for me, I won't understand what anyone's saying.

Roh was president from 2003-2008, coming to power trumpeting a certain antipathy to the United States but becoming wildly unpopular when, among other things, he sent Korean troops to Iraq. He fell (sorry) from power in a bribery scandal and probably would have been prosecuted if not for the Japanese-derived legal system, which discourages prosecutors from indictments unless they're certain to get a conviction.

The whole thing is a reminder of something that lurks just under the surface of this seemingly secure democracy: this country has a pretty sinister political history since the war, rife with military dictatorship, coups, a Tianenmen Square-style massacre of over 200 people in Gwangju in 1980, and the torture death of a student protester that led to the establishment of a true republic, just 22 years ago.

Even now I see headlines that the government is demanding that history textbooks be rewritten to be more "fair and balanced" (my words, cleverly chosen to invoke connotations from the US media, heh heh). Riot police practice fending off attacks by bamboo-wielding protesters. Students periodically get their undergarments in a twist about something or other, usually something anti-American. (Shortly before I came over last year, it was the government's reopening the country to US beef imports; I saw restaurant signs saying "We serve only Korean beef.")

The very fact that thousands of us have jobs teaching ESL is because the government determined that Korea needs English to thrive in the international business community. They could change their minds anytime, though I doubt that they will; I suppose there could be another coup sometime, for that matter. Meanwhile, they spend their days (when not having fistfights in the National Assembly) dreaming up ways to make it more difficult to get, or renew, a teaching visa. Some countries run on bribes, this one on red tape.

In rereading this post, it all seems very paranoid; it probably is. None of this affects my day-to-day life, and Korea seems pretty stable these days. I'm just sayin'.

Men and girls

Many times now, I've seen a pair of young women (not always the same young women) mindlessly dancing, to loud discoish music, on boxes in front of one or another store that's Grand Opening (quiet; I say that's proper usage) or having a sale. (See video below.) Obviously the idea is that they will attract attention, and thus business; however, I've never yet seen a pedestrian or automotive passenger pay the least notice. The women always seem bored or mechanical, or maybe just pretending that they're not there. If feels about one step up from stripping on the dignity ladder.

I think that they're probably all from the same company; they all have the same setup and the same type of outfit: bright, shiny miniskirt outfits in some primary color, complete with bell-bottom leggings that inexplicably remind me of Clydesdales' hooves, which look odd on the show-pony forms of the dancers.

Downtown comes alive in the evenings, and there are invariably young women standing in front of cosmetic stores, dressed in cutesy little outfits: skirts that range from "If you don't change into something more modest, you'll spend the day in detention" to "Hello, officer", leg sheathes like the ones the dancers wear or pseudo-leg warmers puddled around the ankles, handing out coupons or samples and rattling off sales come-ons into microphones turned up way too loud.

At E-Mart, there is always a stunning number of short-skirted, pseudo-cheerleader-outfitted women standing around, practically at every aisle intersection, waiting to pounce on any customer who hesitates for a moment in front of a display.

I commented once to Heeduk about the loveliness of the flight attendants on my trip over, and he said that flight attendant is a very high-status job for Korean women, with a great deal of competition among the prettiest girls to get the position.

All of this is to say that the status of women in Korean society is about the same as it was in the US in... 1955? Some say it's because of the Confucian influence that's permeated Korean society for thousands of years, some that it's strengthened by the fact that every Korean man owes two years of hard military service (which allegedly creates a firm brotherhood) and no Korean woman owes any service at all. Either way, it's sad, though I admit I still look at the women's legs. In a purely cross-cultural analytical way, of course.

The more sinister side of this is that there is such a strong pro-male bias that it is illegal for parents to learn their babies' sex before birth. Why? Although abortion is against the law, it's extremely common, and couples have aborted so many female fetuses that there is a serious sex imbalance in society; there are many more young men looking for partners than young women who are available, and that can't be good for the young men's morale... and tens of thousands of dissatisfied citizens with testosterone overload is never a good thing for a society.

Korea is still a 21st-century society grappling with 19th-century thinking. Twenty-somethings can be divided into two groups; there are men, and there are girls.

Of the people, by the people, for the people

(This is a Wordle I made from the inaugural speech on wordle.net.)

My inaugural experience was rather more solitary than my election day. I got home from work around 10:30 p.m., three and a half hours before the swearing-in. I had my night all planned: sign on to cnn.com and click on their Facebook app, where I could watch all the festivities in one window while chatting with my friends (in a second window) and reading what the world at large had to say (in a third). Piece of pie. Easy as cake.

But... the dreaded words came up on my screen: "We're sorry; cnn.com video is not available in your area." (It was on election night.) Ack! So much for sharing the experience. Okay, then... I'll go to channelsurfing.net, which has an :: ahem :: unauthorized feed of CNN. That'll do. Only it's not working. MSNBC.com... no live feed. This doesn't look good.

By 11:30 (T minus 2.5 hours) I'm all cursed out and try msnbc.com again... they're online live! There's Keith and Rachel and Chris and the whole gang! Yay, Keith! Yay, Rachel! STFU, Chris! He's bloviating over every arrival onscreen, mostly about people's HATS, for some reason, and embarrassing everybody by trumpeting how MSNBC is the network of the 21st century. Still, I'm all set.

...and the time is going by quite agreeably, the feed's working fine, I've got a pot of coffee and a lap of cat, the VIPs are on the platform and oh-my-God-look-at-all-the-people and it's T minus 10 minutes and I'm all excited and MSNBC freezes up as solid as the Arctic used to. (Personally, I blame Bush for the freeze and the melt.)

In desperation, I flip on the tv and three channels are carrying it live! Nice clear visuals, too. Channel 10 has a guy babbling over the original feed, very loudly, in Korean. Channel 8, ditto. Channel 6, a woman, babbling not quite so loudly; I can actually, if I concentrate, hear what's being said on the platform. Very annoying, but the best I can do. I only wish I could really focus on the oath and the inaugural speech.

Fifteen minutes into the speech, my computer dings. It's Micah, across town, Skype-texting me: he can't get on cnn.com and what can he do? It pops into my head: bbc.co.uk! So I tell him, it works, I go DUUUUUUUH and turn off the tv and go to bbc.co.uk and hear the last five minutes of the speech. What a doof.

But at least I didn't lead the new president (President Obama!) into messing up the oath of office.

And, although that last line makes a nice, sardonic ending to a post, I have to say that I was very moved, not so much by the ceremony as by the endless stream of hopeful, happy Americans. I got something in my eye a couple of times.

I know this is a cliche by now, but here it is: I'm proud to be an American. It's been awhile.

Oh, happy day

(Feel free to skip this post if you voted for McCain.)

We had a little Obamarama at my apartment this morning. Anna (alone in picture) and Micah (young guy) from the Manchon school and Ray C. (not the Ray I spend a lot of time with) and Sandi from the Samduk branch came over and we huddled around my laptop talking and laughing and noshing on fruit and cookies and Cup Noodles and tensing up and relaxing and finally celebrating.

Gee, it was nice to have guests! I had never had anybody in the apartment before; I'm miles from any of the other teachers. It really invigorated me, and so did the result.

I believe Barack Obama may become a great president. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he's all words, maybe the lefty base will desert him when they find out he's neither a saint nor a wizard. He's a true politician, and you can't get out of a hole this deep very quickly. But I think that maybe he has just the temperament and the brains we need right now, and he could be a transformational figure like Lincoln or (either) Roosevelt or Millard Fillmore. (All right, now I'm just trying to find out who reads these things all the way down to the bottom.)

...and tonight we're going downtown to the Holy Grill to find a celebration. Hooray!

Boos, shoes, 'n' blues

None of the Korean kids had much idea about Halloween. George supervised the preparation of the school for the holiday, hanging shredded streamers at the head of the hallway, putting black construction paper over our classroom windows and purple construction paper over the overhead hall lights, and hanging a few bats and spiders at strategic spots. It all looked pretty spooky. I brought in mini-chocolate bars for the kids and had to teach them all that you don't get a treat by shouting "Teacha! Candy! Candy!" So now they know about Trick or Treat. A few of them had witch hats or capes on; I predict that Halloween will be big here in five or ten years.

Today, Sunday, I was supposed to go hiking on Palgongsan with Micah, but he canceled at the very last minute. Actually, that's just as well; I'm still pretty beat from going up the mountain several days ago and I was mostly going to go to show him around. I was already partway downtown, having taught a class for the absent Heeduk, so I decided to go on down there and find some running shoes. Mine have worn down pretty quickly; the sidewalks here are bad for me, literally from head to toe. (Ha!)

So I located some New Balances at a smallish shop and then found Hami Mami's for some French toast. (It's okay now to not call it Freedom toast, isn't it?) I'd been to the little Hami Mami's Western-style brunch restaurant by Camp Walker a couple of times, but this was the real thing, the one run by Hami herself. It's in Club That, the jazz bar/restaurant that draws a lot of English teachers and other Westerners. There were a few Yanks there today, and to tell the truth it was nice to hear American spoken. I had actually been there once before, saying goodbye to Curtis, up at the tiny third-floor bar. The place is kinda mismatched and funky in a way I like, sort of like the Rongovian Embassy back home, all grown up. I'll be going back to Club That some evening in hopes of making some new friends.

I'm planning a get-together with some of the friends I've already got, Obama supporters who work at LIKE. On Wednesday morning, we're having an election-watching party (a Democratic party) at my place. Maybe a half-dozen people, which is all the apartment can hold, will come. I found a site that streams MSNBC and CNN (and F-word News) live and one of the guests is bringing a wireless router so we can set up several laptops. We'll have brunchy stuff and maybe, I hope, a little champagne. It will be a great party... if we win.

To tell the truth, I'm a little worried about the election; Obama's way ahead in the popular vote, but that includes huge margins in New York, California, and Illinois. He's only a little ahead in a lot of battleground states, and between the hammering about taxes and the (incredibly suspiciously timed) illegally leaked info about his illegal-resident aunt and possible buyer's remorse by the undecideds, they might flip. It's just possible he could get 52% of the popular vote and lose the electoral college. I don't expect it to happen, but it might. I'd like to say that I'd just die, but I already died in the last two elections.

Anyway, I went looking for mugs and glasses. I walked several blocks west of downtown, where I had never been before, to the huge Seomun Market, and found something I'd rather not have seen (see the post below this), which is still haunting me, but no mugs. I took the bus back and stopped at E-Mart and found the most darling mugs on special. (That adjective was in solidarity with those opposing the anti-gay measures in California and Florida.) They have happy cartoon donkeys on them! (The mugs, not the people opposing... oh, never mind.) If our side wins, I'll give the mugs to my friends as souvenirs.

It will be a great time if we win. We'll paint the town Democratic blue. If not, we'll be the ones who are blue.

Vote early and often

I went and voted today. Sorta. I think. I got my ballot via email, printed it out along with the cerificate that said I wasn't cheating (because if you were going to cheat on your ballot, you wouldn't dare lie on the certificate), then got two envelopes, stuffed the ballot in one, then that one in the other one along with the certificate, then unstuffed everything because of course I'd addressed the inner envelope, then did it the right way around.

Then I walked it four blocks from work, through the traditional market full of radishes and mystery meat on a stick and a guy carrying a pan of still-alive, wriggling, suffocating, piled-up-like-sandbags fish-- I'm afraid I'm going to have to alienate everyone sometime by writing more about that general topic-- to the post office and handed it and some funny coins to the nice young lady behind the counter.

Even though I vote in Florida, I'm hoping against hope that my vote will count. Apparently I learned nothing from the 2000 election.

In the end, though, I haven't had a satisfying voting experience since 1994. Back home in Ithaca, you went into a real booth with a curtain and a big red wooden lever. Pull it to the right, you hear a satisfying clunk and the curtain closes, you push down the little metal levers with a nice little click next to the cute little logos for the parties (eagle and star and liberty bell and torch) and the candidates' names, pull the lever to the left- thunk- and the levers reset, the curtain opens, and your votes register.

Now that's votin', you betcha!

Sorry... too much Sarah Palin on the 'net. Anyway, in St. Augustine you just take a pencil, go to a little six-dollar plastic table, connect two halves of an arrow to register a vote for a DEM or a REP, and stick it in a machine that may have been recycled from Lucy and Ethel's candymaking adventure. Not nearly as satisfying.

The absentee way is even less so. I just want it to count. If the Republicans win again, I swear I'll leave the coun... ah, never mind.