Everything is effed up & terrible, and the temptation is to despair that nothing can be done. Things have been effed up & terrible before, too. Roger Cohen, in the NYTimes, on “The Discretion of Nicholas Winton“:
LONDON — An old man went to Prague this week. He had spent much of his life keeping quiet about his deeds. They spoke for themselves. Now he said, “In a way perhaps I shouldn’t have lived so long to give everybody the opportunity to exaggerate everything in the way they are doing today.”
At the age of 105, Sir Nicholas Winton is still inclined toward self-effacement. He did what any normal human being would, only at a time when most of Europe had gone mad. A London stockbroker, born into a family of German Jewish immigrants who had changed their name from Wertheim and converted to Christianity, he rescued 669 children, most of them Jews, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. They came to Britain in eight transports. The ninth was canceled when Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The 250 children destined for it journeyed instead into the inferno of the Holocaust.
Winton, through family connections, knew enough of the Third Reich to see the naïveté of British officialdom still inclined to dismiss Hitler as a buffoon and talk of another war as fanciful. He raised money; he procured visas; he found foster families. His day job was at the Stock Exchange. The rest of his time he devoted to saving the doomed. There were enough bystanders. He wanted to help. Now he has outlived many of those he saved and long enough to know that thousands of their descendants owe their lives to him…
Only in 1988 did Winton’s wartime work begin to be known. His wife found a scrapbook chronicling his deeds. He appeared on a BBC television show whose host, Esther Rantzen, asked those in the audience who owed their lives to him to stand. Many did. Honors accrued. Now there are statues of him in London & Prague. “I didn’t really keep it secret,” he once said. “I just didn’t talk about it.”…
***********
Blessed Samhain to those who celebrate it, and Happy Halloween to everyone. Apart from lighting a candle against the encroaching darkness, and distributing charity to strangers in disguise, what’s on the agenda for the end of another week?
ThresherK
Latest update*: The absolutely nice people who bought our house have extended our deadline move-out date by a week; they’ve been able to wangle staying in their spot for another week.
We are grateful beyond words, as my MiL passed away two weeks ago tomorrow, and my wife and her mom were each other’s closest blood relatives. I never want to see her suffer like this again. (It goes without saying that this is the biggest “step up” test of being a good spouse I’ve had in our quarter century together.) This has added a lot of logistical issues, including a move of that stuff on top of our stuff, estate bits, and a service being scheduled for mid-November up north.
Meantime, my wife’s physical therapy is helping, and she is able to do some packing and lifting of her clothes and collectibles. Being a guy, I hardly can fold a pair of socks without wrinkling them, and can’t pack fragiles unless they’re from my kitchen or radio shack.
(*Yeah, I’m sorta journaling in this space. Everyone’s patience and acceptance, if not interest, is thanked for.)
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK:
I know that feeling all too well.
Mustang Bobby
@ThresherK: Good luck and best wishes to you and your family.
OzarkHillbilly
Meanwhile, from San Francisco, you can add Mobs of Young White Males Riot in Mission District, to all the other headlines you will never see.
ThresherK
@Mustang Bobby: Thanks so much. To clarify, “the family” is me, my wife, and our current two cats. I was never the child-rearing kind–some folks wonder how I can take care of myself even (haha)!
People say everything is deeper with children–that all the protective feelings are heavier with your kids than even your spouse. I can believe it, but damn if I realized I chose the right thing for me to not have any. This is heavy enough as it is.
@OzarkHillbilly: The “good news” is that she is out of close blood relatives to mourn. I need to outlive her to keep that from happening on my passing. She does have a nine-year head start on me in that regard.
Baud
Has Rand Paul or any other libertarian come out against ebola quarantine madness? This issue would seem to be right up their alley.
WereBear
@Baud: If they were serious and had principles, that is.
WereBear
@ThresherK: It’s great that you are there for her.
While children speculation is just that: people use children to illustrate great depth of feeling… but this post is about someone who obviously felt greatly about other people’s children, no?
People use children as an example because they have experience and there are biological and chemical and social factors all combining. But depth of feeling is depth of feeling… in the final analysis, it is much more about Those Who Love than who is being loved when it comes to depth.
Baud
@WereBear:
They are serious and principled… about tax cuts and deregulation.
Everything else is expendable, it seems.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: My wife and I often argue over who gets to die first. After watching her deal with the death of her father, I guess I will give her a 5 minute head start.
Baud
@ThresherK:
I’ll never have children. Best decision ever.
Mustang Bobby
@ThresherK: I know what you mean. When it was me, my partner, and our dog, we were a family.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: OT. I didn’t get a chance yesterday morning to comment on your response to my comment re the Note. I was off to get my beauty sleep after I left my comment(I know rude of me, and the damn sleep didn’t help my appearance.) I initial thoughts about the Note were similar to your comment, it’s way too big. After using it for almost a year, I’ve really found it’s size to not be a liability. No problems fitting it into my pocket(even my small munchkin pockets) and if I want to use it one handed, it’s got a one handed mode. I’ve not used the s-pen as much as I thought I would, but I use the multitasking(pen window) all the time.
ETA: The main reason I went for the Note, I have not so young eyes. It’s hard to see anything on the smaller phones without my reading glasses anymore.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Thanks. I’m going to the store in the next couple of weeks to check out various phones and see how they look and feel. I’ll look at the Note again and maybe try the pocket test if they let me.
Mustang Bobby
Streaming public radio from Interlochen, Michigan, where they’re having a snowy Halloween.
Yeah, I know a lot of people like that sort of thing and I spent about 45 years in it, but I don’t miss it.
Southern Beale
Astroturfer/professional sock puppet creator Rick Berman is so busted.
Betty Cracker
@ThresherK: You’re a good man. I lost my mom earlier this year, and it was and is a horrible nightmare, and I am honestly not sure how I could have handled it without the love and support of my husband. Unfortunately for us, I got the chance to repay him when he lost his dad a few months later. All you can do is be there for each other. If you love someone, that’s what you do.
WereBear
I think our society has become more flat out annoying to negotiate than it used to be.
The reason I don’t think it’s simple get-off-my-lawn is that I can hear this complaint from anyone over thirty. (Under thirty, they have no basis for comparison, perhaps.)
It’s not even first world problems, because in order to get my Maslow’s first hierarchy of needs met, I have to run an obstacle course of constant corporate harassment — not even to get a problem fixed, almost every such customer service encounter is now a nightmare — but just to do normal things like buy food or pay a bill.
My most local grocery store is on its fourth corporate reconstruction in seven years, and while they can’t move around the produce and dairy and meat departments, everything in between is fair game. It took me a long time yesterday just to find the cotton swabs and I’ve been shopping there for thirteen years.
And when I pay for the food there are all these layers of coupons and charity and which card and if I mess up I have to start all over again. It’s like a video game that I have to play in order to eat.
I get our credit card bills and pay online because sending me a bill is so paper-wasteful because they send miles of tiny boilerplate every time and sending them a check means they lose it half the time, but for days I mysteriously could not log in and finally it fixed itself before the deadline because I’d rather have all my body hair pulled out simultaneously than call their “help” line when it will turn out, as it did, to be ALL THEIR FAULT.
And this is normal, everyday tasks. When something goes wrong they have outsourced the solution to us, the customer… ever notice that? We have to navigate a maze of phone menus but then are only allowed to talk to people who have no power to fix anything.
We have to press an unknown number of “script buttons” to get to talk to someone who can fix something, but we don’t know what actions we have to perform to get there, and I suspect it constantly changes. This is torment for everyone involved, but corporate doesn’t care. Because they all do it and we have nowhere to go.
Yes, I dealt with Time Warner this week. Why do you ask?
PaulW
Prepping for National Novel Writing Month tonight, starting it tomorrow with a kickoff Write-In at the library I’m at. Gonna get something published for certain this time dammit. I need the royalties.
NotMax
Halloween again already?
Now where of where did I put those extra large martini glasses so I can go bobbing for olives?
WereBear
@PaulW: Good on ya!
Last year I had a GREAT idea… and got a surprise promotion that ate up all my time. Talk about your good news/bad news…
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Reading my diary again, I see.
debbie
@Baud:
I just Googled, and he’s on both sides at once!
WereBear
@WereBear: To pick up on my previous rant, it’s not that I’m a Luddite; far from it.
I adore all my Apple gadgets, I make my living with computers, and I find myself watching documentaries about Gutenberg and Luther because I think the Internet is transforming society for the better the same way — it’s rocky for those unwilling to adapt but I’m very willing and able.
It’s the sheer, mind-boggling, constant, deliberate incompetence I have to deal with that is wearing me down. Between Ayn Rand, MBA philosophy, and the grifter instinct running rampant, American business has never been more screwed up since the Panic of 1837.
I got Mr WayofCats a Verizon cell phone the other day, and it was quick and it happened the way they said it would and it was cheaper than I expected and I was rolling around the floor marveling at this when it occurred to me that it’s really sad I’m astonished at that. I had a corporate experience that didn’t make we want to crawl through the phone and bludgeon every VP and CEO and Board Member in the place.
Remember when you could call corporate headquarters in a last ditch attempt to get things fixed? Well, if you do, you’re OLD. They’ve hidden that information so that only the finest of Google-Fu-ers can find it (which I am and which I have) but even when you call there you get routed back to the horrible customer service line as soon as they find out you are a mere peon customer.
The future is a corporate wage slave giving you a useless 800 number. Forever.
Yes, I blame the Republicans. Why do you ask?
debbie
@WereBear:
Here, too, every store (including Target) moved things around after years of leaving things as they were. I don’t understand the point of this. It certainly doesn’t make me want to meander through the aisles for new discoveries. Instead, it aggravates me enough to go to some other store (they’re that interchangeable). I’m sick of not being able to find things.
Baud
@debbie:
Ha! Well, props to Rand for being quasi-consistent with his “uncertainty.” At least he’s not diagnosing patients as having ebola by looking at video of them. That’s progress!
NotMax
Last year not a single trick or treater. Yet I just know if I don’t get some candy this year that they’ll come by in throngs.
Maybe they’ll accept a pork chop.
ThresherK
@PaulW: Good luck! Personally, just let me know when National Half-Page Scribble Afternoon is.
Atsign everyone else: Thanks for your kind words. The wife barely knows who you all are, simply “that place with the cats and liberals whose meetups he never seems to get to,” but appreciates all also.
The worst of the packing and cleaning for the move is over, and its aftereffects should mitigate our worst sloppy housekeeping and packrat tendencies for enough years to make a big difference (next time) (if there’s a next time).
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
The rule of thumb is that nobody has any desk authority anymore. The policy manual isn’t about a neat little process for resolution; it’s about putting you off and coughing up useless apologies until you quit bothering.
In all my customer service interactions, I immediately skip politeness and don’t let the first peons put me off or waste my time – I ask if they have authority to help me and immediately ask for a supervisor. I then tell the supervisor that I expect help and that if he can’t grant it by citing “policy”, I bump up the ladder.
My wife tells me I’m an asshole when I make those calls and that people shouldn’t endure my snide, snarky abuse (she gets upset and leaves the room), but it makes shit happen in a fraction of the time it would take if I was being polite.
Ramalama
@WereBear: I recall the break up of Bell and how all the adults were yelling for about a year — “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” types of complaints.
A few years later I went off to Yurp for 4-5 months where I learned having a phone and using it was a prohibitive ordeal.
Now everyone, it seems, in Yurp has cell phones that are cheap and good. My partner’s family lives mostly in France. No talk about service providers messing around with the internet or the wireless or the roaming or anything like that. I think they’re pretty psyched to have such connectivity.
But I hear you on having to negotiate around basic things. My brother quit his job and moved back in with my parents when they fell ill so he could help them wend their ways around tricky things. They had gold standard insurance and yet had to constantly go to battle. Bro has been documenting this and at some point should have a book written – policy from a personal point of view.
Curt
I live in Savannah, and had yesterday off, and went in to volunteer for Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter, and was pleasantly shocked to see a whole new GOTV canvassing ground-game, being run by a new team from Atlanta. They have urgency, organization, and real money to throw at the effort. I’ve believed all along that Savannah had a lot of votes worth getting out, and I’m incredibly heartened to see this idea not only taken seriously, but implemented with such determination. I’m going back in today, Monday, and Tuesday (already took care of my own early voting), and if I can get someone to cover my Sunday shift at work, I’ll go then, too. For the first time, I have real hope that we can maybe win, avoid a runoff, and get some downticket Dems elected, too. It feels great to actually be out there WORKING toward those ends.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
You sure you belong here? ;-)
danielx
WInd, cold and “wintry mix” expected in this neck of the woods for this evening…lovely. Confidently expecting a reprise of 1989, when nine inches of snow fell on Halloween and all these little kids were traipsing up to the door wearing boots and with their costumes under winter coats. Weather does not deter small children from the pursuit of free chocolate.
WereBear
@Botsplainer: Yes, exactly. They FORCE you to be a jerk to get anything done. And they have to be jerks to you because it’s their job to be jerks to you.
I know the only reason my cell phone transaction went smoothly was because I was buying something. But I’ve had that totally messed up too.
WereBear
@Ramalama: That would be a good book!
And the sad part is it is probably of limited help because the system is so stacked against the customer.
Time Warner & Comcast, who have geographic monopolies? Nightmares. Kafka-esque nightmares.
tybee
@Curt:
howdy, neighbor. :)
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Rand Paul isn’t principled about anything. He would raise taxes on the rich if he thought there was a dollar in it for himself. It has never been to his obvious advantage to even say he’d raise them, then reverse himself. The man is a compulsive liar who would shock Mitt Romney.
@debbie:
See?
SiubhanDuinne
@Curt:
That’s wonderful to hear (all of it)! I’m off in a few minutes to do another 8-hour (or longer)* stint of poll-watching, and I’ll do pretty much whatever they need me to do Monday and Tuesday. I’ve also been very impressed with the organization of the Nunn and Carter teams, although in my observation some counties are much better organized than others. I’m lucky to have done most of my GOTV and election monitoring in one of the good ones (Gwinnett).
*Last night when the polls closed at 7:00, there were still about 25 people in line. By the they were processed, and then all the ballots counted and checked and double-checked, it was 8:30 before I could send the final report for the day to GA Dem HQ. I suspect it may be even later tonight.
Brian R.
That’s a great piece, but Cohen’s point about contrasting the self-effacement of the Silent Generation with the me-first attitude of today’s Twitter users is a little undercut by the standard line the NYT puts under every piece:
You can follow me on Twitter or join me on Facebook.
kindness
California here. Don’t forget Dios de la Muerte now.
Frankensteinbeck
@kindness:
I went and saw Book of Life. It would not be possible to forget Dios de la Muerte. In fact, going to see Book of Life would be a great way to celebrate, since it was made by Mexican and Mexican descended folk to celebrate their culture and the holiday. La Muerte is AWESOME. So are Las Adelitas Sanchez. Go see it, is what I’m saying.
Elizabelle
Boo! “I Walked with a Zombie” is on TCM now. You can pick up the story even 20 minutes in.
Did not realize it was a reworking of Jane Eyre, but you can see that.
Curt
@tybee: Oh, hi! I live downtown, near Forsyth Park.
Applejinx
It is the natural state of freemarket (unregulated) capitalism. It compels things to be exactly as bad as people can just barely stand, which is about the same as the Cold War USSR, just with different commisars.
Curt
@SiubhanDuinne: I just shared the news with someone else I know who’d done some phone banking for the campaign. He said the lack of energy in the hq office here had been discouraging, but I assured him the new team is like night and day compared to that. It’s a shame the way the wrong team can squander volunteer enthusiasm. Lord knows they squandered a lot of mine. Nice to have it back now!
Mnemosyne
@ThresherK:
It really is one of the hardest things — my father-in-law and my father died within 6 months of each other in 2012/2013, so G and I each had to alternately support each other and do our own grieving. Luckily, we (as a couple) were able to come out the other end just fine. Both of our moms are still going strong, so hopefully we can put that part off for another 20 years or so.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
Twenty minutes in, you may have missed my favorite part, which is where the carriage driver explains the heavy burden from slavery that the black residents of the island still carry with them every day and the complicity of the Holland family in it, and the clueless white lady who just arrived from Canada says, “Well, at least they brought you to a beautiful place.”
And he says, “Yes, miss,” and keeps driving.
(Seriously, it’s pretty startling to see a movie from 1941 that even hints at the fact that slavery really, really sucked for black people and they’re still suffering from its aftereffects. Not only that, it makes it clear that the Holland family has been permanently blighted — cursed, even — by their participation in slaveholding. But that was what writer/producer Val Lewton believed and he was able to sneak the message in as a “horror movie.”)
Elie
@WereBear:
I absolutely believe that
Mnemosyne
This is the time of year when Charlotte starts demanding that I build her a fort on the couch or armchair using throw blankets and pillows. She’s a shorthair (our other two cats are longhairs) so I think she gets chilly but not chilly enough to trigger her to grow a winter coat since we’re in Southern California. This morning, she kept digging under the chair cushion until I broke down and draped the throw over it so she could crawl underneath.
Princess
Nicholas Winton saved the lives of my father’s cousins, as well as some more distant family whom we only reconnected with this year. Thanks for posting this testament who is a model of how quiet goodness can win something away from evil.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
I missed that part! Upstairs getting coffee, unfortunately. But thinking on ordering the 9-film Val Lewton set.
Def watching Zombie next time it airs.
Yeah, I was delighted to see good roles for black actresses and actors.
Helen
@WereBear:
Time Warner holds a meeting every week; the agenda of which is “How Can We Piss Off The Customer More?”
Didn’t you know that?
mtraven
Thanks for posting, my father was on one of those transports (I think — he never talked about it, but he did get out of Prague just in time as a teenager). Wound up in the British Army’s Jewish Brigade, along with Robert Maxwell.
Mike in NC
Prague and London: two of our favorite cities. Cannot wait to go back.
Mike in NC
@NotMax: Sadly, we have to wait until 5 PM to do that.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
You can re-watch it on TCMWatch (assuming your cable company participates), so there’s always that option. I have the Lewton set and it’s really good — a few of them I’m not fond of (I find The Ghost Ship tedious) but almost all of them are great. There’s a bit of a stylistic split between pre-Karloff and post-Karloff — once they were able to get a contract with Karloff, the unit’s budgets were increased, so they were able to do period pieces that would have been too expensive before. Pre-Karloff, everything is set in modern day, which sometimes makes them even more powerful. Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie are the two best known, but I also love The Leopard Man (an early serial killer movie) and Curse of the Cat People (which has nothing to do with cat people except for having some of the same actors, just so you know — the studio stuck them with the title).
Of the Karloff ones, The Body Snatcher is by far the best, but Isle of the Dead and Bedlam definitely have their moments.
Mnemosyne
Sorry, apparently it’s called WatchTCM.
chrome agnomen
saw a clip on the is guy nicholas winton, a couple of years ago. he seemed almost embarrassed at the acclaim.
http://www.wimp.com/search/winton
Mike G
In other news, Silicon Valley billionaire crybaby Tom Perkins compares the occasional mild criticism of the rich in the US corporate media to “Kristallnacht”.
And Wall Street billionaire Steven Shwarzman compared efforts to close the carried-interest tax loophole to Hitler invading Poland.