Leaving America
On the Daily Mail, I posted a piece under the title "The Decline of the American Empire," which I borrowed from a movie by Denys Arcand, the great Quebecois filmmaker. Since the the savage tone of piece appears to have precluded front-page treatment, I have revised it a bit for our website in the hope that it might spark a lively discussion. In the future, we'll have a Chronicles blog where such discussions can be held among writers, friends, and registered regular readers.
Record numbers of American citizens and legal residents are renouncing their citizenship or turning in their Green Cards. The figures are still small--1,800 in 2010, according to a Reuters story--but that is eight times the number that renounced in 2008.
For many aspiring ex-Americans, the main reason is taxes. Many of them live and earn money abroad, but they still must file complicated US tax returns, which some see as a symbolic expression of a metastasizing bureaucracy. While Americans once celebrated the ties that bound them to their country and their fellow-citizens, many now see those ties as a snarl of red tape.
By the way, there is no red tape more complicated than what ties up paperwork needed for giving up citizenship, and, if you are rich, there is a hefty exit fee. As my colleague Chris Check pointed out to me, it is the capitalist equivalent of the Berlin Wall.
There is, however, a larger issue than taxes, one that Reuters is unlikely to touch, and that is the disaffection that many Americans have been experiencing for some years. Our moral and social landscape has been swept by a series of ideological revoutions that have reinvented marriage and the family, rejected sexual morality, abjured Western civilization, and redefined the human species.
Leftist Democrats are the worst offenders, but within a few years of every leftist moral coup, moderate and even conservative Republicans have got on board. I can still remember when Republicans actually opposed feminism, children's rights, and same-sex marriage, and I have read of Republicans who, in the distant past of the 1950s and 1960s, even understood and endorsed the Congress's responsibility for declaring war.
Bill Clinton, when asked which 19th century President he most admired, responded that he thought little of anything that happened before the liberation of blacks, women, and children, and Obama and his people would now include the liberation of Gays and endangered species. But Mitt Romney, when he is not wooing Southern Baptists, is far more radical than Lyndon Johnson or Hubert Humphrey. The rhetoric of both political parties now sounds more like Mao's doctrine of perpetual revolution than anything that resonates with the American experience.
Very little that is wrong with these US of A is the fault of President Obama, but in his crude, bullying style and his utter lack of substance, the President has come to stand for all that has gone wrong. Ted Nugent, famous both as a gun-nut and as rock-and-roller, says with his usual restraint that if Obama is re-elected, he will either be dead or in jail. People who have been forced to hear Nugent's music are hoping that the jail will be sound-proofed, but even the paranoid Nature Boy can be right once in a while.
The country I was born into no longer exists. The country in which I grew up and went to school exists only in the mind of people over 60. Small wonder that so many people I meet talk about other countries they'd like to move to.
Yes, every place we can think of has its own problems. My wife and I have for years considered--in descending order of probability--Italy, Greece, France, Montenegro, and Britain. "What?" people ask. "Italy and Greece are economic basket cases, France is overrun with Muslims, Montenegro, under its current government, resembles more a den of thieves than a European country, and Britain combines the problems of the rest with a smarmy hypocrisy in the press that is even more stifling than the atmosphere in the states."
All this is true or, at least partly true, but there is a difference. There is more to England than economic decline and the two and a half party state, more to Montenegro than tobacco smuggling and rich Russian gangsters, and there is more going on in Italy than the struggle between an aging playboy and his communist adversaries.
I used visit my friend Peter Russell, an impoverished poet who lived in a ruined turbine shed near Figline Val d'Arno. He lived in squalor, chain-smoking, binge-drinking, and scrounging off the commune, but how I envied him. He had no TV, thought his own thoughts, wrote endless lines of verse that a few people (including Katheen Raine) admired. He spoke fluent Italian in that wretched English accent that so grates on the Italian ear, but he had something closer to a human life than Bill Gates or Warren Buffet will ever experience.
America, while it has legitimate (though fast-disappearing) traditions and a history of its own, has long prided itself on the liberties enjoyed by its citizens and by the sturdy independence of its frontier communities. Here and there the cultural Sahara of the States is dotted with a small oasis--ante-bellum Charleston, New England in the days of Hawthorne--but no one in his right mind would move here from Europe to enjoy the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or listen to endless repetitions of Rhapsody in Blue.
What we had was a pleasant way of life, marked by political liberty and economic independence. If you want to get a sense of it, you can read the novels and stories of Booth Tarkington, the optimist who chronicled its collapse but never gave up his faith in the ability of the American character to survive even the presidency-for-life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He trained a dog to put his paws up on a chair and go throw the motions of repentance, howling piteously as Booth asked him, "Do you repent? Do yo repent of the sin of voting for FDR?"
In Tarkington 's "Growth Trilogy," he depicts the transformation of the old WASP republic into a plutocracy whose values and traditions are undermined by commercialism, development, and uncontrolled immigration from southern and eastern Europe. In the Magnificent Ambersons, the best known of the three, spoiled WASP Georgie Minnafer is appalled by the riff-raff, but Tarkington sees in the immigrants a growing American spirit--they walk taller, look straighter, more independent.
To a great extent, the optimism was justified. America changed greatly between the two World Wars, but we were still recognizably American. Tarkington died when I was only a year old, and it is good that he did. Given another few decades, he might have had to go back on the bottle in order to retain his sanity, to say nothing of his optimism.
In a way, the melancholy of the conservatives is reminiscent of the hippies' melancholia in the late 1960s. It is true that a lot of counter-culturalists were either Marxists or deracinated hedonists, but there was anothe strain is closer to Chesterton or to the Southern Agrarians than to the dispiriting socialism of the schools and the parties. You see it a little in Jack Nicholson's character in Easy Rider, in his speech, "This used to be a good country." Yes, used to be.
Drugged up and living as remittance men, hippies felt lost or rather abandoned. I was always haunted by the Crosby, Stills, and Nash line, "We are leaving, you don't need us." It's easy to laugh. Who would miss the denizens of the Hog Farm? But, as ignorant and foolish as they were, they knew what they disliked, and that was the Rotarian paradise of their fathers and, now, of themselves as old men.
Remember the song "Going Up the Country?"
I'm going where the water tastes like wine,
We can jump in hte country, stay drunk all the time
I'm gonna leave this city got to get away
All this fussing and fighting, man you know I sure can't stay...
Just exactly where we're going I cannot say
But we might even leave the USA
Cause there's a brand new game that I want to play.
I looked up the lyrics only to be disappointed. I always remembered that last line as, "There's a brand new game, and I don't want to play," which expresses my sentiments to a T.
To Ted Nugent and to all his admirers who think they can fix what is wrong with our country by swapping out Barack Obama and replacing him with Mitt Romney, all I can say comes from another pop song: "Hold on tight to your dreams." Something may happen in the future, a serious depression or a dictatorship installed by a coup, but the America of Booth Tarkington is never coming back.
Perhaps some new variation on old American themes will be restored by an oligarchy or military coup or a religious restoration. I won't live to see it, nor will my children. And if it does happen, that new America will resemble Tarkington's world about as much as the world of Diocletian looked like the world of Cato the Elder or even Marcus Aurelius.
There is no need to despair, but even less to indulge in a fatuous optimism that would make one postpone making a decision until it is too late.
Anyone know of some bargain real estate in Herceg-Novi?
Entries(RSS)
I confess, the thought has crossed my mind, but the two problems that always arise are:
1) - Where to go. It seems like the entirety of Western Civilization is heading in the same direction, some countries just more quickly than others. Is moving to somewhere in Europe just hopping from one ice floe to another while the whole river carries me towards the thundering waterfall? At some point all we abandoned children of the Western world will have to pay the piper, my home seems as good as any.
2) - What to do once I get to where I would have gone. Let's face it, me being a government related financial fellow, with a practically worthless bachelors degree in the Liberal Arts, has little to no marketable skills outside of the job I currently inhabit (aside from, as I've previously mentioned, digging ditches, which pays even less in other countries than it does here, hence all the outsourcing). Living as an impoverished artist is all fine and dandy, and I won't argue that there's not some authenticity to it, but raising a family like that - not so much. Other countries, like Malta, seem happy to take foreigner's so long as they're independently wealthy, and I can't say I blame them - it's a prudent policy.
So those are my initial thoughts. Plus, I can't deny, there's an inkling of Southern patriotism that doesn't want to give up my home, my county, or my commonwealth to the enemy without fighting any way I can. Even if it's the guerilla warfare of having lots of kids, homeschooling them under the radar, and sending them forth to create more pockets of sanity from which some far distant future offensive can be launched. The romantic patriot in me isn't completely dead. But I suffer not irrational happy thoughts about the near or even distant future.
How is New Zealand as a potential relocation spot?
I lived for about fourteen years in Germany, France and Austria, most of it in Germany, and two years in California. I returned to the South, what is left of it. I have taken my stand here and plan, if Providence allows, to be buried in Madden Cemetery at Madden Mill Creek Baptist Church, one of our family graveyards. I struggle and fail all along the way, but still struggle, to glorify God, to edify the Church, to honor my parents, to remain faithful to my wife and to nurture my kids, be they ever so adult, along with the grand kids. There will, no doubt, be strongholds in which that which is Good and Beautiful will be restored and reaffirmed and in which some future generation can get a taste of what once was and a foretaste of that which is yet to come. In the meantime, back in Madden Cemetery, I will, having experienced the first half of my last baptism, death, lie with the word "WAITING" engraved on my tombstone.
Mr. Peters is fortunate in having a home, by which I do not mean a place where he "owns" a residence with a mortgage on it. I envy him a great deal. I think about moving back to South Carolina and will be going in a few months to scout out possible places to live, but it will never again be really home.
I've only been to Australia but I have friends who have lived in New Zealand. Everything they said in praise of the place made me slightly uncomfortable. It's very beautiful but at the other end of the world from anything I know or love, and the culture is highly socialized/communalized British. It has great trout fishing, but if I want to live in a Marxist country with a multi-cultural future, I can stay here and go fishing in Montana or Arkansas.
As Mr. Peters points out, we live here in exile. This was understood by Christians from the beginning but also by Plotinus and his students. I'd like to be able to pretend to believe that living as an exile, not just from heaven but from any home on earth is good preparation, but I cannot. We are designed to live in an earthly home as preparation for a heavenly home. The way we live now, we could imagine some poor soul feeling so estranged in Heaven that he pulled up stakes to move to the other place. This is just a joke of course, but the point of the joke is that we should all have a place where when you have to go there they have to take you in.
Mr. Fleming thank you for another thoughtful article.
I woud like to add my two cents to the discussion. I am in my early 30's but share most of The Chronicles views and this article hit home for me. I moved here from Eastern Europe as an immigrant with my family about 22 years ago. The last ten years or so I have spent abroad in Africa and the ME. I think about leaving the US daily for the reasons Mr. Fleming mentioned. It is getting to the point that I am now seeking a passport, to the suprise of my parents, from the home country which threw my family out. I would say that most of the reasons are cultural for me. I cant stand to watch TV, any news, most movies or music. It is refreshing to know that I am not the only one who feels adrift in this culture.
Per Mr. Flemings comment above it is lucky to have a home. Having lived in multiple countries I can say that having a home , a place where you actually belong, is similar to having a number of lovers, once you have too many you will never love one.
On the other hand if you have people that love you and you care for them you can have a home anywhere.
Just my thoughts.
Thank you.
I would add "Zabriskie Point" to the imagery of the melancholy counterculture. Antonioni's masterpiece was a flop, but is in many ways more authentic than "Easy Rider". There is a desire to fight back, to fly away, yet the main actor, the hijacker feels a responsibility to return the plane.
Likewise the melancholy conservatves sometimes wish they could fly away, yet the responsibility is too onerous.
One of many important things which have gone with the wind is the sense of the commons. There was a time when the "commons" or even "things public" did not equal "the state." Radical Lockean notions of "private property" and Jacobin socialist ideology of the "collective" have squeezed out the commons.
In Louisiana, caught in the thrall of a false dichotomy - Americanism versus Communism - we feared that socialism would destroy us. Indeed the state in the Hobbesian sense, namely an abstract corporation with a monopoly on coercion and with the ability to define the limits of its own power, has subsumed the public space and banished, among many other important things, Christianity from it. Public schools have become schools of the state. Teachers are no longer members of our community, in loco parentis; but are agents of the state against whom we have a constitutional protection, ironically, a protection afforded by the state of which they are the agents. But the commons as it existed in Louisiana was not destroyed by socialism but by the strict application of the Lockean notion of private property. During my boyhood all land, save for such land that was specifically posted, and there was very little of that, could be traversed, hunted and foraged. It was naturally understood that homesteads were exempted: off limits. It was also understood, learned with mother's milk and with a healthy fear of father, that one did not over hunt, over fish or over forage the commons. Many of us made a living or supplemented our living by commercial fishing and by running "wild" cows and feral pigs, marking them in the spring and marketing them in the fall. They, too, ran the commons. For wild cows, feral pigs and boys, times were good. Then, however, in the seventies, the laws changed, even the constitution of Louisiana. To set foot on any private property was to trespass. A boy cannot take a walk, go on a hike or take an adventure in the woods, save on sanctioned trails and spaces on state property monitored by rangers and cameras. The commons no longer exists. It exists only as a Marxist counterfeit in the sense of the collective, some abstract aggregate of people owning every thing, all nice and legally coded.
The commons which is gone with the wind was real: a group of boys without phones, armed to the teeth with pistols, .410 bore shotguns, machetes, Bowie knives, etc. spending three days walking down a creek, not down the banks but down the middle, crossing scores of property lines and not over hunting, over fishing or over foraging but learning how to be men and how to deepen friendships, including the occasional fight. On such occasions, mama would say, "Be careful and don't do anything stupid!" We were fairly careful and not too stupid.
The commons which is gone with the wind was hunting deer with with about forty men and ten dogs over an entire day that took us over one hundred square miles. Hunting has become an act of estrangement. One must have a lease. One has baited firing lanes for deer, lanes viewed from heated stands with T.V. and chair. Most of the land is now owned by big corporations and the government. Their written abstractions apply, not the living rules of the commons.
The commons which is gone with the wind was herding feral pigs across two parishes in the spring to mark them and then herding feral pigs across two parishes to catch and market them. Today, we have no-stock laws and no people laws; and feral pigs cannot legally be sold to market.
It is all progress; it is the end of the commons and the end of the non-state public square. Freedom was never an abstraction. It was living within the limitations of the laws learned with mother's milk and the fear of father on the wide spaces of the commons and the defined places of the public square.
The commons and the non-state public spaces can perhaps be produced in microcosm by nurturing the intimate spaces of the home and church: the sacred communion of the marriage bed for man and wife; the sacred communion of the supper table for the family; the holy communion of the Church for the believing community, and the communion with a truncated commons in the vegetable garden, with vegetables shared, in the flower garden, with flowers shared, and in that garden of the cemetery in which we honor the dead and hold out that wonderfully ironic hope that the fall in the Garden of Eden, that place of most intimate communion between God and man, will be undone in that place of decay made necessary by the fall and that precisely there at the resurrection that communion which was broken and of which all other communions are but a foreshadowing will be made new.
As lagnappe, Providence has provided Chronicles Magazine.
So there are people today saying, "This used to be a good country." And then nearly 40 years ago in the 1970s in the movie Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson was saying, "This used to be a good country". And who knows, maybe in the 1930s, during the depths of the Depression, somebody was saying, "This used to be a good country".
The difference between reactionaries and rebels ceases to exist once you realize that both feel that their time and place fails to live up to their standards and they wish to alter to make it up to their standards.
I feel a line in Oliver Stone's Platoon summarizes the views of those of us who are neither reactionaries nor rebels:
"Are you smoking so's to escape this from reality? Me, I don't need this. I am reality. There's the way things ought to be, and there's the way it is. Now, I got no fight... with any man who does what he's told. But when he don't, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down."
Mr. Peters, what you speak of about "the commons" is a wonderful but completely alien thing to me. It's a dream world I would have loved to have known. I have no idea how old most folks here are, but I'm in my early 30's. Growing up on various Air Force bases I could say that at least we kids could still ride bikes in the neighborhood and climb trees etc. While it was all government owned land, at least on-base housing had the feel of a community albeit one that changed as people moved in and out every 3 years.
When we lived in our first off-base house in Montgomery, I remember striking out with one other friend to traipse through the drainage ditches running through our neighborhood. We crawled through tunnels/pipes and eventually wound up completely lost. Just when we had decided to go back into the ditches to trace our way back some jerk came out and yelled at us to stay out of the drainage ditches (we were 5th graders, he was probably in his 40s). We had to wander aimlessly in the strange neighborhood until jerk man went back into his house so we could sneak back into the drainage ditch since we had no other means to find the way home.
In retrospect, my drainage ditch expeditions were dangerous for many reasons. However, I'd be damned if I let my kids do anything of the sort today. The neighborhood we moved out of 3 years ago had a cute little park adjacent to our house, and when I would take the kids there on Saturday I'd have to make sure that there weren't any busted beer bottles on the slides or swings before they could play (there were always beer bottles broken around the park benches). I even saw a grown man let his dog urinate on the mulch right next to the swings. And this was in a relatively "nice" suburb in Northern VA.
We have no sense of community anymore, hence we have no sense of a communal space or understanding of what obligations such a space would require. So now I live on 3 acres and am making my own damn space for my kids to enjoy.
Pardon me, I have to modify my last statement - we do have the illusion of communal space today. It's World of Warcraft and Facebook and The Sims and all that other virtual garbage. However, even in the stinking pile of refuse one can find a gem, which is why I frequent the Chronicles website. It's no where near as good as sitting with y'all and enjoying a beverage or two, but it will have to do. At least until Dr. Fleming moves to South Carolina and they start having Chronicles related events somewhere to which I can actually travel.
Mr. Cornell,
Some ol' boy has written two memorettes that relate to the commons over at The Front Porch Republic. There is a link to the FPR on this site. One is entitled "In the Creeks and Along the Rails." The other is entitled "April Advent." You might enjoy them.
Vince: you do know there's a chance to commune with the Chronicles folks this summer, don't you? Come to the Summer School July 10 to 15. You may have no interest in the topic (The Age of Constantine) but believe me none of the sessions I have attended have been dry history of a long-dead time. Everything seems to relate to this very age and the way we live it. There's a good chance you might find yourself "enjoying a beverage or two" and I guarantee you'll meet new friends.
Mr Peters: we'd love to meet you too. I have found that much of the wisdom I take home comes from after-hours spent with the other students.
Prateek Sanjay,
"The difference between reactionaries and rebels ceases to exist once you realize that both feel that their time and place fails to live up to their standards and they wish to alter to make it up to their standards."
Time and place are the keys. We can do little about the times we are born to but the place is usually manageable if we seriously look around a bit and attempt to act more like men than animals, while not pretending to be angels either. The best in every age find their way towards heaven or hell, while most in any age, will gather in the vestibule right outside. Arrogance does not blind us to our times or the places we occupy, it blinds us to the way to eternity. Being lost forever is not a Comedy. Sam said if he could not take his money with him, he was not going. But, by God, he went just like the rest.
Mr. Peters,
As always, I enjoy your writing, and at 42, I am just old enough to have experienced the last bits of the life you mentioned being swept away. As a child, I didn't realize what was being lost, or what the future would hold, and I'm still not sure that I am better off for the memories. What I am sure of is that I don't like the world around me. I'm not bitter and hate-filled, but I do feel mostly homeless and adrift at home.
I could actually move to Europe tomorrow as my European wife has been after me to do for years, but I just can't seem to pull it off. About all that is left at this point are the graves of ancestors and family heirlooms, but somehow those things keep me here.
I do believe that this is one of those fish-or-cut-bait scenarios that more frequently occur than we like to admit. If one is going to leave, he had better do it, and if he is going to stay, then stay with a whole heart. Nothing is more poisonous than that mixture of envy and regret about what you failed to do. In a very small way, I regretted for yours my decision not to accept a Fullbright grant to Paris. It was by no means enough to live on, but would have paid travel and other expenses. Our families would have been happy to put up the money, which they could both well afford, but we were too bourgeois and I took a crummy job at Miami of Ohio. But here's the rub. I'd have spent the past 40 years in academia, hating my job and dreaming of doing what I am doing now.
We have more or less decided to stay, though our tentative plan is to spend several months a year out of country. Last year I managed six weeks in Italy and one in Serbia. This year I hope to increase that total by at least a week. I take my laptop and iPhone and can actually get some work done, though my Daily Mail column suffered badly.
All this talk about homelessness brings to mind Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." He nailed it with that last image - there's no home for the Tramp or for any of us in the Modern World. Also, the hilarious bit about creating a machine that let the Tramp eat his lunch while still working at the assembly line - well, both I and most of my coworkers all eat our lunches in front of our computers.
Jim B - I've considered the Summer School, even so much as to even try to find Rockford on a map, but we've already got a week long family trip planned close to that time frame (a Wedding and the celebration of a 90th birthday) and the cost plus trying to get another week off work is a bridge too far this year.
Mr. Peters, please let that ol' boy know I appreciated those articles. Reminds me of stories my Dad tells me about when he was just a boy in rural Alabama. Thanks.
You are probably right about fishing or cutting bait, Mr. Fleming. There will be regrets either way. My ancestors all left other places to come to America, so I'd follow in their footsteps by moving on myself. I guess that's one way to view the situation. It's also possible that Europe is a better option for future generations.
Mr. Sanjay is of course correct that in every generation decent men thinks they live in particularly dreadful times. To see what is different about modern America, however, one need only read the posts of Dr. Fleming and Mr. Cornell on this thread. There is no more community of like-headed folk with which to lament the misery over a good pint of beer. That is the reason why I moved to France, and I have to say it is not working well for me. People who live in decent communities don't trust outsiders and don't have any need to open their hearts to us.
The country I was born into no longer exists. The country in which I grew up and went to school exists only in the mind of people over 60
Amen. I am the same age as Israel and I was born into a Catholic Family in Vermont and neither of those entities exist anymore; that is, both Vermont and the Catholic Church are gone.
Those Christian Catholics born before 1958 will likely remember a Catholic Church that was completely different than the one now existing; Mysterium Iniquitatis indeed!
I see and understand that everything in the Catholic Church is different and so it is quite nettlesome to constantly be told that nothing has changed.
If I hear "continuity" one more time I will start drinking cabernet before noon. There was not one, not one single one, of the 261 Popes who preceded the bestest of all councils who would have been caught dead doing what Popes John Paul I and Pope Benedict XVI have routinely done.
O, good. I just looked at the clock and it is 3:00 P.M. Time for cabernet and Vivaldi and to hell with the world.
Vermont Crank,
There is a Carthusian House ,( The only one in North America ) Charterhouse of The Transfiguration, not far from where you live, breath and take your afternoon libations. I met the Prior once during a very extraordinary convergence of circumstances and am quite confident he could assist in your reasonable assertions, but being wise to the times, they don't allow visitors. You write: "Those Christian Catholics born before 1958 will likely remember a Catholic Church that was completely different than the one now existing; Mysterium Iniquitatis indeed!!" You might write him a note and ask him to at least pray for you. Cheers.
Dear Mr. Reavis. Thank you for the suggestion. I no longer live in Springfield, Vt. I now live in Florida not too far from Sarasota so I can get to the Real Mass every fortnight at Christ the King Catholic Church Chapel and which Church is an Apostolate of The FSSP.
But, at your suggestion, I will write a note to the Prior and see what transpires.
I ought note that over the years I have read many of your comments here and have had positive responses to virtually all of them and I will end by observing that it was necessary that the Catholic Church appear to disappear because when the world witnesses its resurrection it will be constrained to give the sole credit for its resurrection to Jesus Christ who is always the Head of His Church.
Pax tecum
vc: "constrained" describes what? "it" or "the Catholic Church"
too quick on the trigger finger- "it" being the world
Although I am nearly 40 years younger than our own Tom Fleming, this thought crossed my line before. When it - 2040 - happens, and anarcho-tyranny will begin (as if it werent bad enough already), I had considered moving 'home' to my ancestral Scotland, a place I have never been but being racially Scottish I feel some compassion and love for. After thinking about this, and thinking some more, two things occurred to me.
Firstly, there is no place in the extended European world (Europe and settler countries) that has not been poisoned by liberalism. Consequently, there is perception in nearly all of a decline, imagined or not. So I escape American consumerism and an increasingly Balkanized country to escape to what? The same imported American consumerism, an increasingly Balnkanizing United Kingdom, and throw in a much more tawdry media, total gun control, and public drunkenness on a level that would make a college kid blush.
Secondly, and this is more important, as I have become more skilled in genealogy I now view fleeing in almost any circumstances to be dishonoring my pioneer ancestors of 3-400 years past. If enough of us fled, who would tend our ancestors graves? Who would honor their sacrifices and hardships? The answer is no one would, because they are all just dead old white men. Given the chance, the neo-"American" would love to plow over their graves, grind their stones into rubble to make way for the latest time wasting nonsense until the place is so built up there will be hardly any grass left. As an example of this - the town my great-grandfather was one of the very first settlers of in California is now nothing but strip malls, parking lots, and condos. Hard to believe he once farmed walnuts there.
In North America and Northern Europe, there is very little space that is not deeply infected with this madness. At this point the solution is not to look for "where one's roots are" but where one can live decently with sympathetic people. In the past one naturally went where one's kin was. Today it's a bit more complicated...
I know of a couple of decent folks on the outskirts of London or Dublin. In the still-Catholic segments of France one will find plenty of decent folk (though this depends on your willingness to scope them out and less on geographic locality - to a point). In Italy and Eastern Europe life in general remains much richer than it has, though for a Catholic Eastern Europe poses some difficulties.
Apart from Poland. I've never been to Poland, but the Poles I've met abroad have all been very understanding, even the ones I met at youth hostels (where one expects to encounter nothing but deracinated world citizens) back in the day. The Polish-Americans I've encountered who fled back to Poland for cultural reasons do not seem to regret it.
As for the graves of your ancestors, they left theirs behind in Europe. My grandparents, who are still alive, told me that if I could make it to see them before they went that would be great, but that what was more important was that I held on to the faith and values they taught me and orient my life so that I can have children and pass it on to them. (I guess it's because I have grandparents like that - available but not clingy - that I AM very motivated to go see them again.)
I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all answer, so varied are the circumstances and temperaments of men and women. We are not all so blessed as Mr. Peters is, both in his family and in his region. Louisiana is one of a very few states I have ever considered moving to. The food, both French and Anglo, is wonderful, the people are warm, and the political system so corrupt that there is space for human life.
My wife and I both moved several times before we met. She was an Air Force brat, born in Germany, lived in New Jersey, New York State, California, Florida, New Mexico, and England. I was comparatively sedentary, having lived on in Northern Wisconsin, South Carolina, and for a few months Ft. Pierce Florida. Since then, we have lived in Chapel Hill, Oxford OH, McClellanville, SC, and Rockford, where we feel least at home. I have few living relatives and my in-laws are mostly in Southern California, where I prefer to spend as little time as possible. I feel most at home in South Carolina, and we shall probably get some place there, but it will not really be home. Sometimes we are denied what we most want, and sometimes that is for our own good.
My one piece of advice is not to deceive yourself with illusions. Few of us know anything much about any generation earlier than our grandparents and even they are known to us largely through anecdotes. We have lost our country, and while pockets of the old America survive, largely in the South and Southwest, we are like Gallo-Romans in the 6th century. Read Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks and you will recognize yourselves.
I often think of one of my favorite peoples, the Greeks of Phocaea, who abandoned their city rather than acknowledge the Persians even as symbolic suzerains. Some founded Elea in Southern Italy, where philosophy was really created, and more went to their colony that is now Marseilles. When did Marseilles cease to be Greek? Cease to be Roman? Cease to be French?
Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a student of Aristotle and the premier music theorist of antiquity, compared the lot of people who loved "classical" music in a degenerate time to the people of Poseidonia (Paestum) who had ceased to be Greek but once a year took part in a ceremony, lamenting what they had lost, consoling themselves with memories of a lost civilization. The people of Paestum were comparatively fortunate, first in living in so beautiful a place--even in ruins it is one of the loveliest spots in Europe--and second in having a civilization to lament its lost, and third, in actually remembering.
The generations of men are leaves blown by the wind.
Today is my 64th birthday, and to allude to the most famous cultural reference to my new status, I feel still needed, and my cross-the-landing neighbor, whom I have known since both of us were small children, gave me a dozen new-baked sugar cookies this morning. I live in St. Paul in a modest 4-plex that has belonged to my family some two decades more than I have. My grandfather, then my father, and now I and my much more manually accomplished older brother keep the place going and replace and repair as needed and seems prudent. The small house next door, owned by my younger brother, was built by my grandfather. My father lived in it in his childhood, and I lived on its first floor during a very difficult period of my twenties. It needs more work than my building, and I hope to see to some of it this year, especially after last night's conversation with my younger brother, during which he said he had no intention to sell it. Neither place will ever be the subject of a remodeling TV show--not when, literally on the other side of the block, there are the mansions of Summit Avenue.
I came home in July 2010, after being downsized out of the position I'd held for nearly 26 years in Chicago, where I can honestly say I never felt at home, despite the very good friendships I made there. Upon being told I was being let go, the very first feeling besides shock that I had was the pull of home. A few minutes later, the first question I asked of the personnel director who was giving me my "outtake" interview was whether changing residence as soon as possible to Minnesota would have any effect on receiving severance pay.
I understand that Americans of my age have, on the average, moved from one place to another seven times in their lives. I can say that only if I count every change of dwelling within the same town. I suffer from what my advisor in library school called the Minnesota gene, the existence of which he deduced from the shocking-to-him number of Minnesota residents who had never lived elsewhere or beyond 100 miles of where they presently lived, except when in college or the military.
So it's hard to wrap my mind around the notion of relocating to another country. It's hard to imagine doing so without knowing one's relations in that country (and I don't know mine in Dalarna county in Sweden, from which "my people" emigrated in the 1860s and 1870s). It's hard, too, to imagine relocating and renouncing one's citizenship because of money; more than hard to imagine, I think it's contemptible.
Perhaps I am a contemporary Paestian or a leaf not blown too far. I'm not sure how many others there are like me. Certainly I know some, even in Chicago as well as Minnesota.
Dear Mr. Crank,
Thank you for your kind words. As the shorrt fiesty feller with a mesed up lower lip once said to Rosster Cogborn,( who had ridden cavalry with General Sterling Price and married a grass widow before finding work as a Federal Marshal,) "that is might bold talk for a one eyed fat man." I enjoy all the cranks and crackpots at Chronicles. Most of my heros are dead and gone but the few who survive today are mostly old "has-beens" that found their courage or their voice either reading Chronicles or writting for it. You no less than all the others.
What are the options outside of the West for any would-be exile? Are there any places in east Asia, Latin America, Turkey, or elsewhere that one may live in peace and dignity?
Mr. Moses,
Leaving America, looking for one's roots. I "left" America in 1974 for Australia, partly as a response to what I perceived as my country's ingratitude for my Viet Nam war service, partly from disgust with Nixon (what innocence, to be so disappointed in a mere politician!). Wound up staying just short of five years, came away with a couple of years college under my belt and one good friend to show for my time. As a former ex-pat I fully appreciate your situation and know what you mean by the locals not opening up. I was in an English speaking country (well, almost English) and the barrier was still there. And being a Yank has to be one of the most difficult identities to hide/leave behind/assimilate out of. We do not translate to other cultures well.
The dilemma of anyone contemplating leaving America and the tension between Mr. Maxwell's position and yours is still a live subject for me. The fact that I barely know my ancestors has not diminished in the least how keenly I feel the need to "honor their sacrifices and hardships" as Mr Maxwell put it. I tried to do it on my grandfather's ruined Connecticut farm for several cold lonely years, learning the trade of woodcutter and establishing a firewood business, but had to give up that dream. As you remark, all our ancestors left something behind to come here, but still, I ask, where are we to draw the line. Are we ever to draw it, or just keep on running? Dr. Fleming once remarked that Americans don't know what real attachment to a real neighborhood is, ours being merely the result of a developer's drawings on a map, as opposed to the organic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time growth of neighborhoods in a place like Florence. All too true, up to a point. But this hundred-year-old pile of bricks I inhabit out here on Chicago's wild West Side is as beloved to me as any 14th century cathedral, every creaking floorboard and hanging-by-a-thread doorknob of it. And however horrid the neighborhood is now, it is still the place where my mother took me on my first look around a brand new world in my stroller. The bent dwarf tree she used to take me to climb in Garfield Park is still there, being climbed by her grandsons now. Even the thought of an internal migration to a better state gives me the willies. How will those Westerners react to a city-bred dude who exudes Chicago in every word and expression? How will I talk to people who think Howlin' Wolf is what goes after livestock at night?
Oh, I still fell the pull to go far to away places; every time Dr. Fleming speaks about Italy, for instance. Then there's that graveyard full of Jacobis I found in rural Romania I'd love to investigate, and Budapest or Vienna would do nicely as bases for an extended look into my family's past. It's just that the pull to finally stay put is always stronger now.
Perhaps those grandparents of yours will haul you back here yet, maybe kicking and screaming, as I was more than once; if not them personally, then the lure of their homestead, as a place to call your own when they depart?
I've been mulling this over some more, and a few more thoughts have arisen.
First, the tradition of "home" seems different in America than in Europe. I've heard it said that England has a very strong tradition of the "home" - something that can be felt even by visitors and tourists. However, America, from my narrow study of it, seems to have a stronger sense of wanderlust. I think of Pa Ingalls and how he felt crowded when he lived within 4 miles of a town and his constant desire to go off and be the lone man in the frontier. I think of the strong attraction of the life of a cowboy, and the long-standing tradition of the "Ramblin' Man." Obviously in America we have a tradition of community and home, or at least we used to, but we carry with that some form of national character that also calls us away from the community and home.
My second thought is maybe a silver-lining to the clouds we've described here. There is a small blessing that comes with this curse of homelessness. I have some connections with a very small town in a very rural county of Alabama. Life growing up there for the generation before mine was something not too far from the life Mr. Peters has written about. Small town communities have always had their problems, like the gossip and the nosiness, and they were never populated by only saintly people. However, there was still some communal life back then, and it was an overall healthy thing. Today, I would not choose to live there and am happy that I do not have any connections that pull me there. Even the tiny rural towns of Alabama are plagued by the cancer of the corrupt American "culture", and if I tried to raise my family there I would have to fight the manifold influences of kids that are video-game zombies, druggies, heavy metalists, thug-like racists, and who knows what else. Mini-skirts and cut-off shorts and tank tops are the uniform of all females age 2 and up. Divorce is rampant, as are children out of wedlock, abortions, and adultery. If I lived in that community, I could not fight off all this influence. It's just too intense in such a small place.
Where I am now I have few neighbors, and the ones I have are good folks and, like us, keep mostly to themselves. While I feel, always, the pain of the loss of any real sense of community, I have to admit that it is easier to try to instill a sense of dignity and decency in my girls and manliness and virtue in my boys without having to directly fight the powerful influence of a sick community. I get, all the time, the argument that you can't "shelter them from the world", and I agree, but I don't think I can cast my children into the world without preparing them first. Even a soldier goes through boot camp before being sent to war (unless you're an officer in the Navy, but then the Navy's got its own problems).
I'm not encouraging hermit-ism, and we do try to form connections with families that at least somewhat align with our values. I just find that, even given the price it comes by, it's a little easier trying to raise kids without being intertwined with a community that's rotting.
And being a Yank has to be one of the most difficult identities to hide/leave behind/assimilate out of. We do not translate to other cultures well.
The whole reason is that Yankeedom was built on the premise of kicking everything out and just starting over from scratch. Man can go from something to nothing, but never from nothing to something without a lot of divine intervention.
Perhaps those grandparents of yours will haul you back here yet, maybe kicking and screaming, as I was more than once; if not them personally, then the lure of their homestead, as a place to call your own when they depart?
Ô la. I'm going to resist throwing my standard tantrum about how much I HATE living in the United States (and being American) and just casually remark that that's not really an option, even, at this point...
Just let me make it past 2015 before we even START talking about me setting foot there so I can at least have a E.U. passport to get back out whenever I feel the need...
I just find that, even given the price it comes by, it's a little easier trying to raise kids without being intertwined with a community that's rotting.
It IS true, what you say there. On the other hand, the two go hand-in-hand: the rotting community and the ability to wander.
Not, of course, in an absolute sense. I mean, look at Norway, for crying out loud! And even in France, Catholic traditionalists keep to themselves as kind of a super-geographical "village" in pockets of the various regions.
But I see what you're saying. Your story hits home with me in the same way Mr. Jacobi's does. I had the same problem with respect to the Front Range of Colorado, where we spent the last and largest part of my childhood. I am very thankful to have severed all ties to that place and happy that my parents no longer live there.
One word Tom, Uruguay. Good basic services, excellent steaks and beer, stability, new oil and gas wealth. Don't wait until Obama restricts everyone's passport. I know, you're welcome. Also, you have Brazil just a few minutes drive north, just in case.
I came to America almost 23 years ago, from then-Communist Romania. After the fall of Ceausescu, I went back quite a few times.
There are a few places that are not yet fully conquered by the modern-day follies. Maramures comes to mind and Rodna and Northern Bucovina and other places, mostly in the mountains. But like Dr. Fleming and other commentators were saying, they are just pockets of sanity. Maybe larger than in other countries, but shrinking year by year.
The issue, to me, seems to be as much of ones personal desire to move as the willingness of the locals to accept newcomers. Even I, native Romanian speaker, after 23 years of America, will not be fully integrated in such places. I doubt that any American can ever be integrated. Welcomed, yes, helped, yes, befriended, yes, but fully integrated, no.
I do not know if other peoples in other places will react differently, but I have a feeling that a people that has preserved very strong traditions and a very strong sense of community will tend to be reluctant in completely accepting newcomers.
Mr. Cornell,
Your words:
"Today, I would not choose to live there and am happy that I do not have any connections that pull me there. Even the tiny rural towns of Alabama are plagued by the cancer of the corrupt American "culture", and if I tried to raise my family there I would have to fight the manifold influences of kids that are video-game zombies, druggies, heavy metalists, thug-like racists, and who knows what else. Mini-skirts and cut-off shorts and tank tops are the uniform of all females age 2 and up. Divorce is rampant, as are children out of wedlock, abortions, and adultery. If I lived in that community, I could not fight off all this influence. It's just too intense in such a small place."
My mother, who is ninety-five, said that she began, even as a young child, perceiving the changes in the rural commonwealths of the South - the thousands of little towns with their agrarian hinterlands - with the coming of advertizing and the media for advertizing: first the billboards and catalogs; then radio and the movies;and finally television. Culture was no longer being nurtured and renewed locally, culture which had been brought from Europe and transplanted in a new idiom in the coastal strongholds of Jamestown, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine and which had spilled out of those strong holds as bands of families with Bibles, guns, axes and plows moved westward toward founding settlements whose names stretch across the South - Athens, Sparta, Paris, Rockdale and New Rockdale, etc. The locally nurtured culture was supplanted by the anti-culture pouring out of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Neither WWI nor WWII helped, as thousands of service members came from other climes. Air conditioning changed us as well. The front porch as a center of life and culture disappeared. Of course, there is the much written about automobile. The drive-in movie swept across the South in the 1950's: Hollywood and Madison avenue streaming into a car steamed by teenage lust not mitigated by the watchful eye of daddy as it had been on the front porch.
I live today, no longer in my beloved Pollock, but in such an uncommunity which you describe, an uncommunity of the Deep South. Yet, this is where I take my stand. I have dedicated myself to loving my wife, to carrying for my mother and to attempting to care for thirty acres which God has allotted to me in stewardship. My children are grown and gone; so I dedicate myself as the headmaster of a little school to do battle with all of the things which you listed supra. It is not unlike attempting to raise a garden. Some days one feels good; some days, one throws down the hoe as the bugs, the drought and the rot overwhelm the work that one thinks to have done. I have come to that point in life where merely remaining faithful is the greatest victory.
One of the particularities of the closed, insular nature of French is that the community, at least at my own socioeconomic level, is centered largely around the lycée. With few exceptions, unless a Frenchman leaves the country definitively, his social "core" will always revolve around the people he knew in secondary school, and however much he wishes it otherwise, this will be the crowd around which he is most comfortable. This of course includes parents and siblings and whichever other relatives he happened to frequent during that time. It is a reflection of the legacy Napoleon left behind. Ironically, this is true even of the Catholic traditionalists: even though they have more or less effectively stripped their own private lycées of republican and atheistic propaganda and done a pretty thorough job (the *quality* of the job they have done depends on which particular school you are talking about) Christianizing it, but its insular social aspect remains very well intact.
Mr. Moses -
Curiously, social ties in New Orleans are still influenced to a significant degree by which high school one attended. Even in my generation (I'm 55 this year), it is stereotypical that the first two questions a new acquaintance will ask are "What is your mother's maiden name?" and "Where did you go to school?" (i.e. which Catholic or independent private high school did you attend?). It is some measure of our own brand of insularity that, after all these years, I instinctively felt a little shock of surprise when I learned recently that a girl I had taught in 1979-1980 at the venerable (founded 1862) but definitely working class Academy of the Holy Angels in the 9th Ward had become the president of the Junior League in upscale Mandeville, no doubt presiding over former debs from the uptown Academy of the Sacred Heart and Ursuline.
Our eldest child announced, upon her graduation from college in 2007, that she hoped to live in Europe the rest of her life, and she promptly moved to Lyons to teach English. Despite being a fluent French speaker, having traveled in France before, having a French family who adopted her as their own, and being proud of her Louisiana French heritage, she did not feel at home there, chiefly because of the aggressive and derisive anti-Christianity she experienced with her peer group, which she felt more deeply even than having to put up with the Mohammedans all over the place, including her public school classroom, where they formed the majority of her students. In the spring of 2008 she moved to Belgrade to help friends start an English language school, fell in love with Serbia, quickly became fluent in Serbian, and decided that she rather liked the idea of simply becoming an adopted Serb. The fact that we are Orthodox (my wife and I converted to Orthodoxy in young adulthood, and therefore our children are "cradle" Orthodox), obviously, had a lot to do with it. But, in general, I think it would be fair to say that the Serbs are more open and welcoming than the French, and if you are willing to give up the comforts of the West to live among them and share their joys and sorrows, they will take you to their hearts.
I lived in St. Petersburg for the month of September 1999, and was tasked by a Russian parishioner with finding his long-lost daughter Nina who had grown up in West Germany as a thoroughgoing German, for she had been raised solely by Vladimir's estranged German wife. It turns out that Nina had met Viktor from St. Petersburg, married him in the Orthodox Church, and moved back with him to Russia, where they lived in marked poverty compared to her circumstances in Germany. When my friend Olga and I left after visiting Viktor and Nina, Olga turned to me and said, "Nina is my hero!" I asked why, and she responded that it was because she gave up the comforts of Germany to live as a Russian among the Russians. She had found her man, and she was determined to take her stand with him, in his Faith and in his native land.
So, as more than one contributor to this discussion has suggested, let us each find a place to take our stand, dig in, and with God as our help do our part in this rearguard action which appears to be the peculiar task of our time.
Mr. Moses, please see my reply to your observations about the lycee "culture" in France, which I inexpertly posted above, below your 1 PM post.
Mr. Moses, i mistakenly posted my reply to your comments about the lycee "culture" in France above, below your 1 PM post.
Make that April 20th 1 PM!
A belated Happy Birthday to you, Mr. Olson. The subject of the discussion here notwithstanding, many happy returns of the day.
Exile at home seems the right description and there is no escape to a utopia in this life. I'll reach to my Serbian heritage and remind many of the much misinterpreted prince, our sainted Lazar, who, in military defeat on the Kosovo plain, reminded his Serbian bretheren that we ultimately seek a kingdom in heavan and not here on earth. The present government in Belgrade, with all its many real faults, at least had the good sense to reinstall the old Serbian national anthem 'Boze Pravde' which means God of Justice. A good reminder that there is only one Judge and arbiter of justice ultimately and we live in exile until we face Him. At least one person's interpretation of the sitaution.
Thank you for relating that most fascinating tale. Yes, I think it is the general disposition of the Serbs as opposed to the French... unlike your daughter (who graduated the same year as I) I have frequented only religious types here in France. I can't say it has been awful but I am still fighting an uphill battle to get an honorary baccalauréat of sorts and be somehow accepted. :\
I do not doubt Serbia would be a lively and wholly worthwhile place. However, I am not Serbian Orthodox and I think that fact would always limit my long-term mobility around about those parts, however rich my social life would undoubtedly be. Even if we could manage to reunite I've invested so much in learning Gregorian chant and modalities that I'd have a hard time convincing myself to switch rites. At least in theory there won't be any cause for conflict if I convince a girl here to marry me...
Coming to America ; 1957, new york harbor, aboard the ss Italia. a group of young americans and a 12 year old boy they have befriended stand on deck watching the city draw near. bremerhaven and cherbourg five or six days behind them. halifax- a few 2 or 3 storied buildings along the waterfront, green hills in the background, - the day before. the boy astonished by scenery, nevertheless asks one of the german speakers in the group " aber wo sind die berge ? " the american turns to his companions. some back and forth kauderquatsch ensues, he looks at the boy and says " reinhold, hor zu, wollen wir berge in america dann bauen wir die dinger"
Germany; 1966, coming into bremerhaven aboard the ss Hanseatic. on deck a group of young men. one asks " was denkst reinhold, die alte heimat, nicht wahr?" someone else answers " ach woher, der reinhold ist kein deutscher mehr, seine heimat liegt nicht vor aber hinter uns."
Wouldn't it be interesting if the "Camp of the Saints" turns out to be us?
There is no better place. It is all rotten. It has all been rotten since Eve fell for the Serpent's "charms" and Adam fell for hers. Until Christ comes again, no place on the face of God's Creation will be good.
Which leads me to think that this is all about perspective. Those with a traditional Christian perspective see civilization careering headlong over some final abyss into Armageddon and, utlimately, Christ's triumph. But they see themselves as living in the times of the careering, not in the times of Christ's triumph. Those without this traditional Christian perspective may see the world as just dandy, as it is. They have championed "progress," much of what we would call "decline." So, they are pleased with milllions of babies being killed for the sake of convenience. They are happy to imprison innocent people in the name of State's security. They like total State control under the Democrats or Republicans. They want a one-world government, with absolute control (by them) because only they hold the key to the perfectibility of man. They have either never learned, or forgotten, God, reality, and the nature of man.
So, do we hunker down and try to make the most of what is left, living within the system and taking advantage of the small opportunities to feel joy? Perhaps the best alternative is to take up the Cross and spread the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There certainly are a great number of lost souls out there with hearts open to the Word of God. Or, I suppose, we could attempt to fight the Leftists and Statists on their own ground--in the mass media, academic, and political arenas. But we will lose there. They will paint us as they have painted Serge Trifkovic and Pat Buchanan, and since they control the means of communication, they will win.
In any case, the foundation of salvation God's Grace in Christ, so let us follow Him if we do nothing else.
Mr. Peters:
"It is not unlike attempting to raise a garden. Some days one feels good; some days, one throws down the hoe as the bugs, the drought and the rot overwhelm the work that one thinks to have done. I have come to that point in life where merely remaining faithful is the greatest victory."
Upon reading your above comments, I suggest a couple of small but powerful books by one of my favorite Christian (Orthodox) writers, Vigen Guroian:
Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening
The Fragrance of God
I agree with you that remaining faithful is the greatest victory (and possibly, keeping in mind all that remaining faithful entails, our only essential obligation).
Mr. Olsen:
“I understand that Americans of my age have, on the average, moved from one place to another seven times in their lives.”
Your comment above prompts me (I’m a little more than a year older than you) to say that after our wedding in June, 1969, until I left active duty with the Navy in January 1976, my wife and I lived in:
Pensacola, Florida
Meridian, Mississippi
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Galveston, Texas
Newport, Rhode Island
Virginia Beach, Virginia
We built a house close to where my wife’s parents lived in Annapolis, Maryland, moving into it in February, 1977. We are now contemplating remodeling or selling and building a new house. (The primary question is where?) We are thinking of moving because our current community has become “home” to a more “temporary” population.
The neighbors on one side are a Navy Lieutenant and his veteran wife. Formerly an instructor at the Naval Academy, he recently deployed. There were four previous owners of that house before the Navy couple.
The older couple on the other side recently moved out, selling their house to a real estate investor who has rented it to a female veteran with a ten-year old son. Both mother and son may have serious psychological problems. There seem to be other people coming, staying, and going periodically. At times there are four cars parked in front of that house. It had two previous owners before the older couple.
It may be a sign of the times, but the Navy couple had a woman about their age staying with them. She was paying rent, but has since moved out. There was also an older woman staying with the mother and son on the other side, as a co-tenant. She has also moved out, telling my wife that the younger woman had apparently tried to poison her cat and threatened her with violence, claiming that as a veteran, she could get away with murder.
Mr. Olson,
I mis-spelled your name above. Please forgive me.
Amongst the campers; there is a great deal of difference between a desperate man looking for a home, and a man desperate to find a new residence. One seeks a refuge,the other a comfortable bed and breakfast. To one we can offer some drinking coconuts,a basket of breadfruit and taro- wish him God's speed and a favorable wind. To the other- a life preserver to flot and jet some, and a realtor"s listing . I have some sympathy for the third world Yusef looking for some shelter- not much for the first world Joeseph international house hunter looking for cheaper rent.