1530 Big and Little Things I noticed

Obese Americans. I didn't see any. Travel though old cities of Europe with cobblestone streets, hills to climb, many irregular steps, and much less handicapped access than what we have come to expect, limits travelers and tourists to those in reasonably good health. The ages of the tour members ranged from early 40s at the lower end to mid-80s in the upper, but despite some frailty among a few of our older members, no one was what I would call obese. Nor did I see obese Germans and Austrians, who seem to look quite healthy and athletic based on what you see in American cities. (They obviously are running off all those wonderful breads and pastries.) I know I've read that they are catching up with us, but it is very noticeable the minute you step back inside an American airport.

Toilets. When you could find public toilets, they were well designed and managed. Toilet paper in Germany and Austria seems to be universally supplied by companies that produce paper towels and only know that product. A few places we experienced pay toilets which seems a throw back to the system we had here in bus and train stations in the 1950s. I didn't notice that they were any cleaner or nicer than those that didn't charge, but it does provide jobs. The stalls seem to be more sturdy, intended to last longer than a few months or years, mostly covered with ceramic tiles with stainless steel doors and really solid locks.

Churches and cathedrals. These seemed to be maintained by the state by taxing the Catholics (I suppose it is the same for Lutherans, but we didn't go through any protestant churches on a tour). Europeans like to criticize our American politics being influenced by religion, however, I think Americans would really balk at having the state collect taxes to support the churches. The cathedrals are a huge draw for tourists who bring in millions of Euros to support the economy. If anything, the state ought to do all it can to support these wonderful old buildings, which cost millions to maintain. We rarely saw a cathedral without scaffolding and plastic to catch debris.

Minorities. Although there were many African Americans on our flight to Frankfurt, they must have all been going elsewhere for a holiday. I literally saw only Caucasians and Japanese in Europe. I know there are "guest workers" in Germany and Austria who are darker, but I didn't see them. A few security personnel in the airports looked exactly the same as in the United States. I saw only one or two people in wheelchairs (it would be extremely difficult in the cities we visited), and only one retarded person. You know what? I think I missed the diversity of our large cities (disclaimer: we have almost none in our suburb which is pretty WASPish). For all our complaints about political correctness, affirmative this and that, and immigration policies, we are still a nation that accepts everyone as a goal, even if we haven't reached it yet. As unemployment soars in Europe, I think we'll see increasing resentment against minorities who have never become citizens, and even those who have.

Smoking. May I say a big thank you to all those liberals who have pushed cigarettes and cigars out of our faces, and eliminated the stink from our clothes and hair. Oh, how quickly you forget how unpleasant it is to sit in a smokey restaurant, or even to sit or stand outside with something that smells like old dirty clothes smoldering. Pugh!

Television. We had TV in our cabins, and unless we were going through one of the 21 locks on the Danube, we had fairly decent reception. I would sometimes watch German programming while trying to fall asleep (time change you know). Did you know you can watch a home make-over in German and pretty much figure out what is going on? They seem to love something that looks like a Judge Judy show, only it appears to have actors, not real plaintiffs and defendants. One time while flipping through I found three running simultaneously. We could also get BBC and CNN International. So we kept up with Hurricane Rita. One of the oddest things I heard on CNN (which I rarely watch at home) was a comment and clip of President Bush warning people to evacuate and take safety. The commentators said he was responding much more quickly than he did with Katrina having learned from the government's poor response. But after the video clip of his warning, she said, "This is the same speech he gave to the people in the path of Katrina in late August." Now why a warning has more impact if he is in a suit and tie in DC than in boots and jeans in Crawford, I have no idea.

Part I: Our Wonderful Trip
Part II: Our Danube Cruise
Part III: Photos: Nuremberg
Part IV: Photos: Regensburg and Passau
Part V: Linz and Melk
Part VI: Photos: Durnstein and Vienna--under construction
Part VII: East Germany Lessons for us
Part VIII: What to wear on a cruise
Part IX: Dancing on the Danube

1529 Our Danube Cruise

Our tour was arranged by the University of Illinois Alumni Association through AHI (Alumni Holidays International) which was the host for our cruise on the Danube River from Nuremberg to Vienna. I must say, it is an outstanding tour company and we literally didn't have a worry in the world. Every little detail was taken care of, and the ship they hired, MS Switzerland, was outstanding with attentive staff, fabulous food, and lovely decor.

Our Campus Directors were Cecilia R. Berry a native of Hungary and resident of California who works for AHI and Robert A. Dalton, of England who is a private contractor. They were both outstanding, and as we floated down the Danube, other lecturers joined us providing information on German history and culture, German reunification and its political and economic implications, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Austrian education system. Particularly interesting was Dr. Hans Hillerbrand, a professor of religion at Duke University. He began his career as an exchange student in the 1950s at Goshen College in Indiana and is a well known author in the area of religion.

Here's the site and description from Notre Dame's Alumni.

"Once upon a time, Charlemagne dreamed of connecting the waterways of Europe into one vast thoroughfare from the North Sea to the Black Sea. The formidable engineering and political challenges this vision presented took nearly 1200 years to overcome. The Main-Danube Canal, one of the most impressive engineering feats of all time, was the realization of this dream and, since September 25, 1992, has linked an enchanting world of fairytale castles and cities steeped in tradition.

On this exciting journey through the heartland of the Bavarian Alps and the breathtaking Wachau Valley, you’ll marvel at spectacular natural beauty, well-preserved medieval charm and architectural splendor. You’ll traverse the Main-Danube Canal and the Danube River as you relax in comfort aboard the elegant M/S Swiss Pearl. You’ll explore historic Nuremberg, regal Regensburg, picturesque Passau, the Wachauer towns of Linz, amazing Melk and Dürnstein and of course classic Vienna!"

1528 We had a wonderful trip

but it is good to be home. Our daughter and son-in-law met us at the airport last night and offered to take us out to eat (their wedding anniversary). But we'd been up for about 20 hours, so we declined. She took home the pumpkin pie and topping she'd brought over. Maybe today. . .

I'll be writing more as I find my notes and thoughts. First a comment about airports. We saw many. Columbus, Chicago O'Hare, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Vienna, Munich. The only place I encountered rude staff with incomprehensible English was in Chicago!

I felt so sorry for one elderly Asian traveler at O'Hare trying to decipher verbal instructions. I would have taken him aside and in a gesture of American welcome and kindness helped him, but I couldn't understand a word the staff woman said. Elegant hairdo, long brilliant fingernails, and a spotless uniform, but not an understandable syllable or phrase of standard English. What a shame. Except there was that guy named Spencer where our passports were checked. He smiled, he was friendly, and he welcomed us home.

O'Hare was also our only experience with a delayed connection. Our international flight from Munich (Lufthansa) was within a minute of the scheduled arrival time. Our flight home had been coming in from Dallas and was redirected to Indianapolis. They scrambled to find another plane, and we were on the runway only 30 minutes late, then sat behind 26 others because it had been raining. Even so, in what must have been the shortest in air time I've ever had between Chicago and Columbus, we were only one hour late getting in.

Now, that's all out of my system, so on to happier thoughts to collect.

Signing off for awhile

While I'm gone, stop and read my archive column for Lakeside, Ohio stories and my recollections of long ago and far away. See you when we get back.


Lovely Wachau Valley


Beautiful Ogle County

This one's for you--son

Take a look.

1525 Where will the Conference be in 2006?

The ever-liberal and sensitive-to-diversity American Library Association had planned to have its Conference in New Orleans in 2006. The listserv is providing a variety of views on whether it is appropriate to be worrying about that during this time of disaster and great need. Considering that many organizations in the past have opted to boycott cities that are not friendly to women or gays or labor unions, I'm wondering why ALA ever considered New Orleans in the first place. By anyone's standards it was a mess before Katrina--a tourist mecca served by the working class hovering above the poor, living in project housing. New Orleans not only had the French Quarter, great hotels and jazz, it had a huge poverty rate among black Americans with enormous racial divisions and income gaps among whites, blacks and mixed race. Crime was at crisis levels (endangering locals more than tourists), with bars on the windows of even modest homes. The state and local governments have historically picked the pockets of the poor and used them to build a political base by doling the money back to them. It was an environmental disaster waiting to happen, with layers of bureacracy, red tape and regulations that paralyzed everyone trying to fix it.

Just the poverty alone should have been a red flag to the conference planners, but they never noticed the problem until it showed up on Fox and CNN.

1524 The woman I never was

Nathan Bierma sends out a newsletter about language. The latest issue has an interesting item about the word "spinster." I got married so young I just completely missed that stage of womanhood.

"Endings: The word "spinster" will be retired by the British Government this December, after centuries of use as the official term for a woman who has never been married. The male counterpart, "bachelor," also will be shelved. The Registrar General currently uses these terms on marriage certificates to describe the previous status of newlyweds. But now that homosexual couples can enter into what the Government calls "civil partnerships," the Registrar General wanted terminology that could apply to gay couples. From now on, an unmarried Brit, regardless of sexual orientation, will officially be called a "single."

"Spinster" was first recorded in the 14th Century as the name for the occupation of spinning wool -- a job usually done by a woman. Eventually both the job and the name became so associated with unmarried women that the British Government adopted it in the 17th Century as the official title of an unmarried woman, according to the OED.

The word has never lost its connotations of social inadequacy that came, in centuries past, with being an unmarried woman beyond marrying age. "I can't feel the word is much of a loss," wrote British etymologist Michael Quinion in his World Wide Words newsletter (www.worldwidewords.org), adding it has been "a very long time since an unmarried woman referred to herself by this title in seriousness." " The article also appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

1523 Such a deal!

Couldn't have worked out better. Be totally unprepared for anything above a category 3 hurricane, don't get your poorest and most vulnerable out in time, create chaos by not allowing ngo's to provide food and water, and then when all that bad planning gets washed away, ask all the other citizens of the United States to pay for it.

Here's what Blanco asked for yesterday in a speech to the Louisiana Legislature on the Restoration of Southeast Louisiana.

"Governor Blanco left no doubt about what she expects of the federal government. That includes:

• Asking the federal government to cover 100 percent of what Louisiana will spend on this disaster – just as was done after 9-11.

• Significant financial help to rebuild homes and return our families.

• Tax relief and loans to keep our businesses afloat.

• An extension of unemployment benefits.

• FEMA to give priority to hiring Louisiana companies and Louisiana workers."

So if Alabama and Mississippi were only slightly less prepared, do they get this too? And Florida? What about Ophelia and the North Carolina coast. They're quite prepared, having learned some painful lessons from FEMA's failures in 1999.

1522 Money she brought home from Washington

Gov. Blanco got a lot of money to build a highway between Louisiana and Arkansas. Truthfully, she's no different than any other governor when it comes to highway pork (Alaska and West Virginia are the greased pig highway and bridge champions), but considering events of the past few weeks, I wonder how much that stretch of highway was needed?

"The money our delegation brought home from Washington and the state investment we secure today are big steps toward making the complete connection from Arkansas to New Orleans.

Our delegation’s hard work has resulted in funding through 2009.

Beyond this, I know they are committed to securing the funds we need to build those last few miles and I know Louisiana will have the investment we need to match that federal commitment." Blanco Speech August, 12, 2005

"Governing magazine recently increased Louisiana’s grade to a solid B for the way we run our government and manage our taxpayers’ money. Only seven states ranked higher."
Uh oh. Boy, are we in trouble! Her State of the State speech, April 25, 2005.

1521 Bait and Switch

Writing and publishing were required in my job--and I loved it. Seeing my name in print in journals I respected was nice--but not wonderful enough for me to want to do it in retirement. I enjoy research and always did the appropriate amount and meticulously documented my conclusions. However, I usually "knew" my conclusions before I began the project. So when I saw journalist Barbara Ehrenreich being interviewed by Stephen Moore about her latest book "Bait and Switch" I wasn't too surprised by her conclusions that something is terribly wrong with our society because of her anecdotal evidence and personal prejudices proved that before she started her research. She says she was surprised that white collar, middle-class people with college degrees had trouble finding work, but her conclusion was that "they" (U.S. business?) were to blame. I wasn't surprised--I just don't agree with her method or her conclusion.

Here's her method. At 63, she changes her name and social security number and attempts to get a $50,000 job in marketing. She isn't successful. Are we surprised? Have you seen her? Have you seen people who usually go into marketing and PR? This woman looks like her face would fall off if she smiled! She looks like me when I'm deep in thought. She was quite combative with the interviewer who was from the Wall Street Journal (you can watch it on C-Span Book TV on streaming video), and I'm wondering how she thought she'd come across in a personnel interview in corporate America. She admits she was "acting." Does she think personnel officers (human resource managers?) are so inexperienced they can't spot that? So she tries an image coach, who sounds like an idiot and an image consultant, but still doesn't get a job. She admits she had no "network," and actually, that's a serious weakness for many women. I'm guessing from her attitude and career track, she's a bit of a loner. "Maybe I did it wrong, but I did what other people are doing," she sighed.

The interviewer pointed out the "BS" factor in the people who were making money trying to coach her into a position (for which she was completely unsuited). He suggested that the problem was "you were trying to be someone you were not." "So what" was her attitude about smiling. She missed it, didn't she? Being in marketing or PR is not about smiling. It's about personality, drive, depth, understanding the market, training, skills, and having a lot of contacts--maybe hundreds--attending sporting events, symphony, church, being on boards and committees until you think you can't attend another meeting.

Her advice for someone looking for work: "Be careful how you spend your money--it's mind games, new agey nonsense (referring to career coaches)." "Support and self-help groups don't really give a person a chance 'to tell their stories.'" She wanted out of work people to form warm fuzzy support groups and also lobbying groups. She whined about "corporate conformity" in clothing, and tried to argue with Mr. Moore who actually does work in the corporate world, when he denied a dress code. It made me wonder if she has walked the streets of any U.S. city or halls of academe and seen the awful outfits people wear, particularly women. Try church if you really want sloppy.

She refused to acknowledge the validity of Mr. Moore's statistics that countered hers--she was terribly full of "yes, buts." Her only answers for out-of-work people were for more government involvement--universal health insurance and longer unemployment benefits. How does that create one job--which was her other chord--too many jobs being lost. He decimated her points about Europe's employment picture and she just poohed-poohed them. "Well, they haven't accepted a low-wage economy. . . they have strong unions." Completely ignored the sky rocketing unemployment caused by all these features she wants in American businesses. But she was against Bush's plan to make workers more secure with their own retirement accounts (which she admits on air she knows little about--but she's against it).

We know several men ranging in age from 40-55 who are out of work and well educated--exactly her theme. They all want the same thing--well-paid, secure positions, outside the area in which they've worked, areas which have caused burn-out and failure for them. Any colleague, friend or relative could tell them what they are doing wrong and make suggestions on how to change. They will not, cannot listen. They have the same "Yes, but" attitude that Ms. Ehrenreich threw back at Mr. Moore's suggestions.

I haven't read "Bait and Switch" and probably won't. The interview was enough. I heard enough whining and sighing when I was employed.

1520 Why could Florida respond and other Gulf states couldn't?

Florida had disaster teams in Mississippi and Louisiana before those states' responders did. Why? How? Preparation. Planning. Learning from the past.

"And how Louisiana and Mississippi officials have handled Hurricane Katrina is a far cry from what emergency managers here [Florida] would have done. Mississippi was in the middle of rewriting its disaster plan when Katrina struck. Officials there were still analyzing what went wrong during Hurricane Dennis earlier this year when Katrina overtook them. Search teams from Florida were rescuing Mississippi victims before law enforcement officers there were even aware of the magnitude of the disaster.

Louisiana also lacked an adequate plan to evacuate New Orleans, despite years of research that predicted a disaster equal to or worse than Katrina. Even after a disaster test run last year exposed weaknesses in evacuation and recovery, officials failed to come up with solutions."

Read the whole article here.

1519 Don't know much about geography

What a wonderful world it would be if Europeans would read a geography book sings Jane Galt. Megan McArdle “is sickened by the smug response of some Europeans to this tragedy: their gladness that it has taken Bush down a peg, their overweening belief that this somehow happened because Americans just aren't as nice or as smart as Europeans are. Of course, Europeans have no way of knowing how they'd do in such a disaster, because they have no storms like Katrina, no earthquakes like Northridge, no rivers like the Mississippi . . . but somehow that doesn't seem to stop some of them from being sure that the ability of their police to stop 40 or so football yobs from rioting translates perfectly into an ability to handle the displacement of 500,000 people when even the police have no water, food, gas for their cars or power for their radios.”

She lists five items about our geographic, climatic and demographic differences that Europeans [and Americans] need to consider when criticizing the hurricane response. Might be nice if some librarians providing misinformation were aware of a few of these facts too.
Asymmetrical Information

1518 The Five stages of Crisis Management

begins with denial, says Jack Welch in an article in today's Wall Street Journal. Then comes Containment; then Shame-mongering. Fourth stage is blood on the floor, and finally we get to something better in the rebuilding and final stage. Whole article here.

I suppose he could be talking from experience, not as a CEO but a very public divorce and remarriage.

1517 Ophelia and Floyd

Five months ago when we were planning our trip to Germany we needed to decide our airport for the international flight. Remembering that September is hurricane season, and recalling the devastation of Floyd that changed our vacation plans in September 1999, I voted for Chicago O'Hare instead of Charlotte. It's a lovely airport and is a much easier place to be making a transfer, but not during hurricane season.

Floyd caused such devastation in 1999, particularly to the agricultural areas of North Carolina. I still remember seeing lagoons of dead pigs, cattle and chickens. Those of us on the Veterinary Medicine listserv were dashing messages back and forth trying to locate colleagues. Many people were killed and displaced, and two years later there was still controversy about how the recovery money was being spent. President Clinton preempted the governors of several states causing a lot of political wrangling. Over 2 million people were evacuated and there was general chaos, much of it blamed on FEMA. Again, it was the rain and the flooding not the hurricane that caused the worst economic damage, and people all up and down the coast suffered. I see that a number of conservative bloggers are now bringing up the Clinton Administration's poor response to that storm. Just Google "Floyd Clinton FEMA" if you are interested. I'm just thankful I will be flying out of O'Hare, my least favorite airport in the country.

1516 Just Staying Alive

"I think for the most part people have just been trying to stay alive," said Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. "They've been waiting for rescuers. They've been on top of buildings, all the rest of it. They have not been there trying to figure out what to steal. They've been trying to stay alive." Jefferson is quoted on ABC.com on Sept. 2.

Then on September 13, ABC reported that Jefferson had diverted some resources that same day from rescuing people from rooftops to go to his home and removed some of his property.

“Military sources tells ABC News that Jefferson, an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A five-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched.
Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson's initial request.”

“The water reached to the third step of Jefferson's house, a military source familiar with the incident told ABC News, and the vehicle pulled up onto Jefferson's front lawn so he wouldn't have to walk in the water. Jefferson went into the house alone, the source says, while the soldiers waited on the porch for about an hour.”

“Finally, according to the source, Jefferson emerged with a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator, which the enlisted men loaded up into the truck.”

He then refused a ride on the helicopter and another truck needed to be sent to get him. Tying up that many rescue resources certainly shows the depth of his concern, doesn‘t it.

1515 License photo

My birthday is coming up so I needed to renew my driver's license. I thought nothing could be worse than my last DL photo. I was wrong.

1514 A filibuster?

I've been busy getting ready for a trip and have only listened with one ear to the Roberts' hearings. But I did get a chuckle out of someone accusing him of filibustering. Biden? The Senators ask these insanely long questions using up big chunks of their allotted time, and then go all legalistic, naggy and self-righteous when he hands it right back to them with. . . long, complex answers. And can't that Dianne Feinstein just put you to sleep?

1513 Parroting Rush

Yesterday a reader accused me of "parroting Rush." I have on occasion listened to Rush Limbaugh, usually if I happen to be in my car in the afternoon. And I listen more often to 15 minutes or so of Glenn Beck in the morning. But like most liberals, this particular reader seems to think Rush has a lot of power--I couldn't possibly, after having been a Democrat for 40 years myself, have noticed any of the successes and shortcomings of those years. I've often said that I wouldn't own a home on Lake Erie if I'd waited for Republicans to push to clean it up. But that doesn't mean that now I'm going to try to destroy business and agriculture and return all Ohio, Michigan, New York, etc. to the pristine wilderness it was before all the evil Europeans arrived.

The other morning I was listening to 1230 in my car instead of 620 and came across an Air America Progressive Talk (for those of you outside the U.S. that is a fledgling left wing a.m. corporation funded by liberals and already in ethics and funding trouble). So I listened to see if left wing radio had anything to offer. Nope. It was mainly hype with very little information. If all I wanted from radio was emotion, entertainment and hyperbole (and this is where Beck wears a little thin), I suppose AA radio could be a choice, but if I'm going to listen to talk radio, I'd prefer more depth. After the jokes and loud bumper music, I'd want something solid. So I listen to those left coast guys at my computer on KRLA 870 instead.

Money is money to capitalists. Even the giant Clear Channel, home to so much right talk, is offering some Air America shows. Is this a great country or what?

1512 Women can stop poverty

As the nation and world watched "poor blacks" (as liberals called them) gathering after Katrina, some of us noticed something else. Mostly, we saw women and children. Young women, old women; thin women, fat women; women in groups, women alone; healthy women, disabled women; well dressed manicured women, and shabby, ill-kempt women. Poverty in New Orleans and anywhere else in the USA is in the control of women, because it only takes three things to wipe out most systemic poverty. 1) Finish high school, 2) get married before starting a family 3) have your first child after age 21. Very few women who do this live in poverty. If they build a good marriage, they have a solid economic base; if the marriage fails, they are better prepared to face adversity with an education. They will be better role models for their daughters. The Democrats would lose their political base if serious inroads were made by black women in controlling their own destiny rather than looking to Uncle Sam to be a negligent step father. This is why for the last 40 years the War on Poverty has been preaching not abstinence, marriage and education, but more money for more programs to help the poor stay poor. As New Orleans rebuilds, you won't hear any politician, local, state or federal, say "our old programs to help the poor failed," they'll just say they were underfunded, like the levees.

Update to my comment: Dan Quale was right.

William Galston, once an assistant to President Clinton, put the matter simply. To avoid poverty, do three things: finish high school, marry before having a child, and produce the child after you are 20 years old. Only 8% of people who do all three will be poor; of those who fail to do them, 79% will be poor. And their lives did not improve if their mother had acquired a stepfather. See the article by James Q Wilson in City Journal. These statistics do not apply just to blacks.

1511 They may never

get around to reporting in the MSM why the Red Cross and Salvation Army didn't aid the evacuees trapped in the Superdome and the Convention Center worries the Anchoress. Some people are still saying, "If it is true. . ." however, you can go to the FAQ page at the Red Cross site and they tell you why. And the Director Marty Evans has been on national TV and has reported it. It's sort of old news, so I'm not sure why the MSM would say anything at this late date. I reported it on my blog on September 6, and I checked the page after seeing her on Fox and she was also on Larry King on CNN. I'd call that MSm at least (small media since it isn't the NYT). I'm guessing it has also been in the Wall Street Journal, although I haven't diligently checked it. The page says:

"Acess [sic] to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

Every authority noted in the FAQ, "National Guard", "local authorities" and "state Homeland Security Department" clearly explains this was not FEMA at fault (although it may be in their training guidelines). Considering the chaos that erupted after the flooding brought more people to the already full facilities, it's possible that this decision, while it looked awful on TV, was the best they could do at the time.

Obviously, the whole situation would have looked very different to the world if cameras had shown immediate relief in the heat while people waited for buses. And we'll never know if that immediate relief might have made the situation worse by bringing people back in. The locals believed it would and THEY made the call.