Expat Envy on the 4th of July

On the 4th of July, it is hard to replicate the wonderful experience of celebrating America's independence the way it is done back home.  You can get together with fellow expats, you can try and make the right food, you can pull up some You Tube videos of "A Capitol 4th" from the nation's lawn in Washington D. C. but it's not the same.  Sometimes to really experience something, you just have to be there.

Today, I saw some smoked ribs, baked beans, and cole slaw my friend Scott made for his family, and I was filled with such longing for American food, I had 'expat envy.'

So here's a toast to my friends participating in boat parades on Ten Mile Lake in Minnesota, or marching in the 4th of July parade in Illinois, or watching the fireworks over the lake in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, or Lake Okoboji, Iowa.  Enjoy your 4th, enjoy your wonderful plate of food, enjoy the view from Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs of purple mountain majesty or of gathered elk in Estes Park, Colorado and pinch yourself at being able to experience such a glorious day. Sometimes we don't appreciate the extra-ordinariness of our everyday existence until we can't experience it like we usually do.

To anyone reading this who has served, is currently serving, or keeping the home fires burning for someone serving our country, thank you so much for your gift of service to the nation.  I appreciate it. I have enjoyed the years of freedom I have experienced that you have made possible.  I don't take it for granted for even one moment.

Similar posts:
My Wish for You: Freedom

My Favorite Freedom

Yes, the Czech Republic is really like this

Imagine, being able to find beauty like this and world class beer for under $1 a glass all in one country.  Yes, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are really like this. The girls *are* this beautiful. The guys, unfortunately, not so much. Click on my title to see the Czech and Slovakian ladies nominated for Miss Universe via Tanya at Czechmate Diary.

"The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria

This marks my 400th blog post.  I have to give a shout out to a blogger I read and was inspired by before I became an expat.  Once while reading his blog, he remarked that he had reached 400 posts. I had no way of knowing how easy or hard that was at the time. Now I do and I salute Al Tischler, formerly of Radio Free Europe, for all of his hard work on the blog he wrote while his family was in Prague called Tischlers In Prague.  I loved reading his family's adventures and couldn't wait to get to get to the Czech Republic as I planned from America. Al, it is a pleasure to catch up with you!

Now that I'm an expat, I see things that worry me about the future of America.   A recent book published in the last few years with the title "The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest" by Fareed Zakaria zeros in on that concern with a title that makes it sound like America zenith has past.  I love watching Fareed Zakaria's show 'Global Public Square' on CNN and wanted to hear what this cerebral immigrant had to say about the American future. 

Fareed Zakaria is well-known now to American television audiences, but it is important to remember what a breakthrough broadcasting success he was when he started his international affairs show. For most of us Americans he was the most prominent Muslim-American we had ever seen on television. Indeed, friends have suggested he could be our first Muslim-American Secretary of State.

I appreciated that his was the first Sunday talk show to consistently, week-after-week, bring an international panel of guests on his show to discuss how issues looked from abroad. Utilizing intellect and charm, he led Americans in considering and valuing viewpoints from non-Americans at a time when America was scared, hunkered down, and lashing out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat," helped me understand the economic impact of globalization, Zakaria's "The Post-American World and the Rise of the Rest" soothed me as an American and made me comfortable with the political impact of globalization (despite its alarming title). As nations become "more like America" and compete with us using the same level of democracy and capitalistic meritocracy that made America such a success, it could be easy for Americans to fear the future and the world more. Zakaria suggests that if we stay true to democratic values and don't fight the reality of the rise of the rest, America has enough advantages with our superb ability to assimilate immigrants, our unrivaled institutions of higher education, and our storied ability to turn research into actual products to compete just fine against nations with larger populations.

Our role will be to lead politically and economically by example, coordinate nations in a multi-polar world as George H.W. Bush did so well in the first Gulf War, and thrive with our friends not just by ourselves.  A new edition of the book, "The Post-American World 2.0" has been released as of May 2011.

New York Times asks its readers "Why Do We Travel?"

 Village leader at his traditional house in Harran, Turkey.


 Recently the New York Times, inspired by travel writer Paul Theroux, asked its readers "Why Do We Travel?" Entries poured in and the finalists have been named. I don't envy the judges.  I can't decide which one I would choose for the winner: either the essay about Rome or about Turkey.  Do you have a clear favorite? Which essay would you choose as the best explanation of "Why We Travel." To read the final three entries, click on my title.

Bloggers Unite! Celebrate World No Tobacco Day

I love the idea of Bloggers all around the world uniting around a topic to effect positive change. If I learn new ideas from the countries I visit that I can take home, one of the things I can do is bring ideas from my country that have worked and would be helpful to other people.

Today bloggers are uniting around the idea of "No Tobacco." If you would like to read the entries of other bloggers who are advocating for no tobacco, click on my title.

Since both of the countries I have lived in as an expat LOVE their tobacco, I repost a post from last year that celebrated one thing my country and specifically, my government, did well. The American government began a campaign to teach citizens how life-threatening tobacco is to smokers and the people they love. It began over 40 years ago, and today, America has one of the lowest smoking rates in the world. Here's my post:

I moved to Prague in November of 2008. It was the day after the Presidential election so I left full of hope and excitement for my country's future. The preceding month, however, with the credit crisis and the bank bailouts pretty much drove American belief in the fairness of our system out the window. It would have been so, so easy to give up in cynicism. I was grateful to be in Prague where I would be avoiding the continual depressing drumbeat of economic calamity in American news.

When I came to Prague, I discovered Czechs had their own cynicism about democratic politics. I'm not talking about before 1989, but after. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution, Czechs felt all of the assets of the country were stripped away in a big "grab" by politicians and carpetbaggers.

I don't want to be cynical. It's not my nature and cynicism never advanced the cause of humanity. So as I made my transition to living in a new country, I vowed to celebrate one wonderful thing about my government and the Czech government so that I could keep cynicism at bay. In my next post, I'll talk about one wonderful thing I admire about Czech government, even though there are actually many things (just as there are for America). Today, I'd like to celebrate my own government's actions. It actually ended up saving my life.

A typical sign
that conveys how socially unacceptable
smoking is in America.

I am grateful to the United States government for providing leadership in my country on the elimination of smoking as a socially acceptable practice. This wasn't a grass-roots movement from the people pushing up but a top-down campaign from the Surgeon General of the United States (our top public health official) to the people.

In 1964, the Surgeon General declared that "smoking causes cancer." That took real courage to say back then because 46% of American smoked. They smoked in cars, elevators, planes, offices, and their homes. The 1964 report was issued on a Saturday, so great were the worries about what it would do to the American stock market.

The news that smoking causes cancer finally sank into my brain in 1991 when I was 31 years old. Up until that point, I smoked more than I care to admit (okay, I'll admit it: 3-4 packs a day).

When I came to Prague, I had never seen so many smokers! Not even when I was 17 years old and thought smoking was cool. Just walking down one of Prague's very lovely streets, one has to be careful not to get a cigarette burn in one's coat because people are actively walking and smoking at the same time! I once chatted up a young Czech college student who was smoking and he was astonished by the idea that anyone would want to quit. "It relaxes me." I don't even think he knew it could kill him. And it's not just Czech young people who smoke.

Most educated people in the USA have educated themselves about the danger.  In America, the majority of smokers left have less than a high school education. I've entered salons frequented by Prague intelligentsia where nearly 100% of the people had a PhD. But they are uneducated about the dangers of tobacco. The air was so thick with smoke you could see it move!

I  was mystified by how unlikely it would be that my country led on this and the Czech Republic lagged on this. After all, in a socialist health care system, wouldn't the government want to eliminate preventable chronic disease because it would eliminate expense? Wouldn't Czech people resent their neighbor's smoking if that drove up national health care costs and their taxes? Isn't it in a socialist government's fiscal interest to change this smoking culture?

Maybe the taxes raised on cigarettes more than cover the cost of the increased disease and people who smoke are used for financing public budgets. I don't know. I will occasionally razz, with a joking smile, my smoking friends who are huddled outside for warmth where they've been banished nationwide in America: "hey taxpayer, thanks for paying more than your fair share through your smoking. You make it easier on the rest of us. But you don't have to kill yourself in the process - why not just mail in the money if you're so insistent on paying these extra taxes?" One of my young coworker has taken to calling his smoking breaks "paying everybody's taxes."

Why did my country lead on curtailing smoking culture when we had a giant tobacco industry that was hugely powerful, created tons of jobs, and lots of export income? The government continually, over and over again, did the right thing despite all that. We have all kinds of industries back home that sway the government from doing the exact thing in the best interest of the public as a whole. I would love to understand why the American government was so terrific on this issue when the government didn't even bear the health care costs of increased smoking, insurance companies did. What do you think, Americans? How could this sort of extraordinary leadership on an issue be reproduced? We sure could use an awful lot more of it.

I am so grateful to the Surgeon Generals of the United States for saving my life. Thank you for continually reminding the public that we were killing ourselves. And since all movements have a drum leader, I would like to take a moment to honor the individual human beings who have led this movement in my country. Thank you!

American Surgeon Generals from that period onward:

Leroy Edgar Burney (first federal official to state that smoking causes lung cancer)
Luther L. Terry (commissioned landmark 1964 report on smoking)
William H. Stewart
Jesse L. Steinfeld
Julius B. Richmond
C. Everett Koop (led a campaign to create a smoke-free society by 2000)
Antonio Novello
M. Jocelyn Elders
David Satcher
Richard H. Carmona
Regina M. Benjamin

See, it's not so hard to keep cynicism at bay! Next post I will talk about what I most admire about the Czech government.

Dental Overreach

 Disclaimer - Not my teeth - someone else's

Anyone who has ever moved knows what a job it is to reestablish all of the relationships that are necessary to daily life.  The church, the school, the gym, the doctor, the dentist, the shoe repair man, the list goes on and on. As an expat the burden is even greater because it's hard to compromise on the standards you want for yourself.

Recently, I decided I needed my teeth cleaned because it had been 18 months since my last cleaning.  I had an amazing dentist in America with a fantastic staff.  I loved visiting his office, so much so that the one thing I did when I was home in America was make sure I got my teeth cleaned there. My dentist's office was full of information about he and his wife being in the top 1% of cosmetic dentists.  Everything was fantastic about that office from the wonderful friendly staff, to their expertise, right down to the terrific bird feeders out his window for me to watch. 

So I asked friends I trusted for a terrific dentist recommendation in my Istanbul neighborhood, went and checked out the office beforehand and inquired about prices, looked around and was sufficiently impressed that it was both upscale and thoroughly modern to international standards. Today I went for my appointment.

The dentist didn't know that it had been 18 months since my last cleaning.  He used those little dental mirrors to look at my teeth.  "You don't need to be here. Your teeth don't need a cleaning. There is nothing to clean." he said. "It was nice to meet you."

I was completely flabbergasted.  My dental hygienist back home wanted me in every four months.  She wanted me to buy a WaterPik.  She wanted me to buy tools that would stimulate my gums.  She said without quarterly cleanings and daily tools my teeth would really suffer. Now they guy is telling me after 18 months of benign neglect they look fine?

This appointment was a perfect example why America consistently runs up medical bills that outpace the world without better outcomes to show for it. France spends a mere 11% of GDP on health care.  America is at an unsustainable 16%, predicted to hit 19.5% in five years. For all the money we spend, we are 42nd in the world in life expectancy. We are the only industrialized, first-world nation without health care for citizens and we routinely leave 50 million of our fellow citizens uninsured.  Yet, we spend all this money and for what?

Why do we keep doing what we're doing in America? Overtreating? Each year that we don't fix this pointless spending, other nations get to invest that money on something else.  The 5% difference in what we spend on health care and someone else doesn't spend on health care then gets compounded every year.  Their investments in their countries build and make all kinds of exciting projects possible.

What Creates Compassion?

"If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it" ~Atticus Finch, "To Kill A Mockingbird"

All around the world today, bloggers are uniting to celebrate our human quality of compassion.  I love participating with other like-minded souls on a project like this because it then also becomes a celebration of the new kinds of connection that the internet makes possible. You can find other blogs on compassion by clicking on the "May 15 - Day of Compassion" badge to the right.

Compassion allows us to sublimate the feeling of "other" that we see in people and instead find out how we are alike.  To really feel compassionate, we have to do what Atticus Finch, the fictional hero of "To Kill A Mockingbird" suggested to his daughter Scout. We need to consider life from the other person's point of view.

How do we do that when the "other" is "the other?" If a group of people is unknown to us, and we fear them, we don't know any of them, we haven't talked to any of them, we will probably let fear of them grow in our mind.

I suggest the quickest way to grow compassion for others that we do not know or understand is to consume each other's literature and media.  My country would be a different place if the American people had access to Al Jazeera and could see the Arab point-of-view.  My country would be a different place if it would choose to have a more global appetite for media, and not just consume home-grown American books, TV shows, and movies. I believe we would literally be nicer.

The useful thing about consuming media of "the other" is that it is not threatening.  We can hear the opinions, emotions, feelings of those who disagree with us or see things differently without having to instantly react.

I remember when I saw the movie "Cesky Mir," a thought-provoking Czech movie describing how Czechs were working to end a possible American-installed radar system on their land.  What stunned me was not the arguments against the missile system, but the knowledge the Czechs had about how corrupting all that American money floating around would be to their tiny little democracy.  I believe Americans are so used to that wash of money over our government we can hardly see its influence anymore - it seems normal.

In the movie Cesky Mir, one old village lady asked, "how can we trust the Americans? You see the kind of crap they send to our country for our young people through their movies!" Yikes, that cut me to the quick because I knew it was true. We do create a lot of crap movies! I acknowledge and agree with her point-of-view.

Could that be the future? Citizens of one country getting citizens of another country to question how they do things through media? This could be the start of mass grass-roots diplomacy!

Maya Angelou

One area where I feel that I have a lot of compassion and where my country has grown a lot of compassion is in race relations.  That has been the work of my generation of white Americans: opening our heart to the full participation of African-Americans in American life. I have consumed untold quantities of African-American literature, music, and movies. I defy anyone to read Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" or Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and remain compassion-less.

Ralph Ellison

This is why literature is so incredibly important and why I am so proud of my profession of librarianship.  It heals society. It strengthens our heart muscles and makes them more daring and more loving. I have scads of African-American friends because I feel comfortable with them because I am comfortable with their outlook on life (as much as one can generalize about a whole group of people) through the consumption of their media.

I can see both the good and the bad in African-American culture just as I can see the good and the bad in my Caucasian culture.  What is so healthy in my country is that we can laugh at ourselves and each other and discuss all of these things publicly. We are listening to each other and enjoying each other. I would hate to think of what my country would be like if we never choose to become more accepting of each other. I think it would be similar to this parallel, non-touching existence of Coptic Christians and Muslims that a famous Egyptian blogger describes in his blog "Rantings of a Sand Monkey" here.

In contrast to how comfortable I am with African-American culture, it was recently announced that America is now 16% Hispanic.  I have consumed hardly any Hispanic literature, hardly any Hispanic music, and hardly any Hispanic movies.  I tried to think if I had any Hispanic friends (one may call me on it later, we'll see).  I couldn't think of any. That doesn't surprise me since I have opened no window into their culture other than food.

I had never been inside a mosque until I moved to Turkey.  It has been so darn healthy for me to come form my own opinion of Muslim societies rather than stick with the image Osama Bin Laden thought I should have. The more I learn from Turks about who they are and what their culture is about, the less distance I feel between me and them.  It is impossible for a group of people to be "the other" when you can see yourself in them and feel what they are feeling.

If I could ask something of you today, gentle reader, ask yourself: "whom do I fear? Whom do I resent? Or who is invisible to me because I choose not to see them?" Then go out and find their best literature, movies, or music.  Start a relationship with an entire culture.  You may end up with wonderful friends who will enrich your life.