Language Arts

Monday, June 8, 2020
The New York Times printed the results of a survey under this intriguing headline: "When 511 Epidemiologists Expect to Fly, Hug and Do 18 Other Everyday Activities Again."  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/08/upshot/when-epidemiologists-will-do-everyday-things-coronavirus.html

These scientists evidently err on the side of caution.  They aren't anxious to gather in the sort of rowdy gaggles that epidemiologists were previously notorious for.  At Palazzo di Gotthelf, the challenge is to meet the expectations of America's Favorite Epidemiologist and that ain't easy.
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Marjory Fields and Robina Rafferty both note that the horseshoe pattern of house numbering that bewildered us in Berlin (discussed here last week) can be found scattered through Great Britain.  We saw another confusing pattern in Florence, Italy.  Buildings in the central business district display a red number and a black number, different, of course.  Stores and businesses have a red-painted number, R is added when written, while residences in the same building sit behind a black-painted number.  Hardly intuitive.

While I don't have personal experience with it, I understand that the addressing system in Japan is designed to never get you there.  In most of Japan, streets don’t have names.  Blocks have numbers; streets are just the empty space between blocks.  Buildings on the block are numbered in order of age.  The first building built there is #1, the second is #2, regardless of its position.  I searched in vain for statistics on aspirin consumption in Japan compared to other industrial societies, but they have to have headaches galore.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

I have described West End Synagogue, my one and only synagogue, as a gathering of anarchic Jews and we have proved it again.  Tonight, for the third time in five days, we met to choose the words on a sign to be placed in our window to express our concern for racial justice. 

 
"Black Lives Matter" is the signature phrase for the current protests worldwide.  However, it contains a poison pill for many Jews, because Black Lives Matter (BLM) is more than just a phrase, it is also a movement.  https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

 

A scan of the BLM website reveals no mention of Israel or Jews, but in August 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, of which BLM seems to be only a part although easily mistaken for the whole, issued its platform, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people and calling for a total academic, cultural, and economic boycott of the country.  Objections came fast and furious.  https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/from-left-to-right-jewish-groups-condemn-repellent-black-lives-matter-claim-of-israeli-genocide

 

Quick on-line searches for that controversial platform now lead to a "404 Unknown Site" message, sort of the equivalent of "It's not you, it's me" used to end a relationship.  But, the pain lingers, at least for some, which is why "Black Lives Matter" is not a good choice for a synagogue window.  

We looked at other alternatives, but eventually crafted our own language and very well at that.  

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

For the second time this week, we went on vacation today.  Sunday, we drove to Bethel, Connecticut to spend the afternoon in the lovely backyard of Denise and Rob, who, in ordinary times, shuttle back and forth to an apartment in Manhattan for work and pleasure.  I think that the Upper West Side's Power Couple did an effective job of bringing urban grimness and angst to the leafy suburbs. 

Today, we turned 90˚ east and drove to Roslyn Heights, to visit Jill and Steve, intrepid fellow travelers, last seen in downtown India in the far distant past.  Sitting in their very green backyard required no passport, checked luggage fees, inoculations or non-refundable deposits.  What a vacation.
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I'd like to take a few moments for a pedantic exercise, although not entirely a frivolous one.  The article below, written 5 years ago, raised the question, "when to use capital letters or not for people who are identified with the label 'black' or 'white'"? 

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/language_corner_1.php

 

It concluded: "Language can reflect and foster bias and even invite violence, so respectfulness should always trump style or linguistic ambiguities."  Of course, a bigger challenge surrounds the issue of Who is what?  Alternatively, Why bother?

Thursday, June 11, 2020
"President Trump on Wednesday came out strongly against the idea of renaming U.S. military bases that are named after Confederate generals," after all, what better inspiration for our fighting forces than to be constantly reminded of defeat?  

. . .

 

Speaking of slogans, some protestors are calling to "Defund the Police," a position that will antagonize too many people, is easily parodied and does not describe the underlying policies.  As the headline says: "Cities Grew Safer.  Police Budgets Kept Growing." 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/12/upshot/cities-grew-safer-police-budgets-kept-growing.html

 

Ironically, as police budgets grew in the wake of 9/11, other municipal services often had to shrink to fit taxpayer sentiment.  This left more heavily armed and equipped police officers to cope with manifestations of social problems left less attended or unattended by service cutbacks in areas such as homelessness, mental health and drug abuse.  Even if our police forces were staffed entirely with graduates of Bard and Oberlin, I think that combining police work and social work yields unsatisfactory results in both fields.

 

Reform the police, refocus the police and regulate the police, but let's not offer an excuse for four more years of fascism by using glib slogans.

Friday, June 12, 2020

UCLA professor Gordon Klein has been suspended after a reasonable exchange with a student about changing or cancelling his final exam, because of the racial protests and the racism that led to them, that he followed with some snark, asking whether an interracial student should receive half an indulgence.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/ucla-professor-no-racism-in-refusing-to-cancel-final/2020/06/10/f5e6410e-ab82-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.html

 

There but for the grace of a faculty appointment at a major university go I.