Category: General

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1600 Porky’s Avenue

The only way to describe the governing class of the United States of America today is as a frat party. Or a cage match on WrestleMania. Even as a frat party in a cage match of WrestleMania. 

A couple things got me jogging along this (in no way, original) line of thinking. One is the person of Pete Hegseth, a fellow Minnesotan who looks and acts the part of the president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, nominated some time ago, as America’s worst fraternity by Bloomberg. The Smooth Operator’s responses to questions in his Senate confirmation hearings about his excessive drinking and aggressive behaviour towards women call to mind that other Lord of the Realm, Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh.  Both men brushed aside detailed, multiple and intimately-sourced revelations with an entitled and unflappable wave of the hand as if to say, “Take a chill pill, dude! I was just having a good time. Is the other keg open yet?” 

The other thing that got me going was the book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. It’s a funny, sad and tangled story to follow about the influence of one man, Vince McMahon, founder and owner of the WWE (formerly WWF) and his product’s influence on a couple generations of American young people, and Saudi billionaires; I’m looking at you MBK. 

Aside from the garishly overdrawn characters, the blood, the steroids, the sexual assault, the violence and the appeal to our lowest human instincts (to act without consequences; to win at all costs) the biggest contribution pro wrestling has made to contemporary America is kayfabe. According to prowrestling.fandom.com, kayfabe (pronounced KEI-feib) refers to the portrayal of events within the industry as real, that is the portrayal of professional wrestling as not staged. Referring to events as kayfabe means that they are worked events, and/or part of a wrestling storyline. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on camera. In short, kayfabe is pretending that what is fake is real and what is real, is irrelevant. 

Ringmaster details how Vince completely destroyed the quaint ‘sport’ of pro wrestling that has been a popular sub-culture of American entertainment (not sport) for decades and built in its place a monopoly of gore, noise, excess, violence and abuse of people in and out of the ring. Something known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) which Vince recently sold to the company that owns UFC for 9 point 3 billion smackaroos. More than Disney paid for Marvel and Star Wars together! 

Of course, the American President, Donald John Trump is a “yuuuge” WWE fan.  Apparently, Vince McMahon is one of only two people whose phone calls DJT takes in private. And Melania is not the other one.  Vince’s wife, Linda, headed up the Small Business Administration in Trumpdom1 and is now slated to be in charge of American educational policy and priorities! She (and indeed, the whole McMahon family) has herself participated in wrestling kayfabe events. 

It is not hard at all to see in Trump the lessons he’s learned from Mr. McMahon. His promotion of violence, his mixing up reality and fakery, his wild stories, the sexual hanky-panky and the tearing down of all norms. 

It takes no imaginative stretch to see the lines that connect all these dots-Hegseth, Kavanaugh, ‘Hang Mike Pence’, Stormy Daniels, Oath Keepers and ‘Lock her up!’-with the cultures of the wrestling ring and frat house.  

An era of uncontrolled young man testosterone 

One journalist summarized the culture of that frat house as having a “history of mistreatment of women, of systematic racism and of providing a path for an already elite portion of society (white men) to get ahead even further, usually in lucrative fields of business, finance and politics.” 

Indeed, Geoff Duncan, a Republican and former lieutenant governor of Georgia, in a recent TV chat, said, “[Donald Trump’s] legacy is more built on a Ponzi scheme—a Ponzi scheme of populist ideas—and every day it’s going to get a little bit more edgy and a little bit more daring and bombastic. And I think you have to look no further than [his] nominees to see it as part of that next step in the Ponzi scheme. 

If you told me that Donald Trump was building an administration to run a frat house, I’d believe you,” he added. 

And so, here we are.  

Time to get the old toga out of the closet I guess. 

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Letter from Dushanbe

Rudaki Square, Dushanbe

LETTER FROM DUSHANBE 
 
There are two things that could kill you in Tajikistan these days. The first is a massive earthquake. Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics with a population of six million, is the place where four major mountain ranges meet as the Indian subcontinent inexorably crushes and grinds northwards into Europe. You feel the earth tremor here almost every week: sometimes just a low quiver; at others a quick chiropractic snap that rattles your windows and creaks the walls. 

The second way you can be deprived of your life is to be slammed by a vehicle with tinted windows (could be a Jeep Cherokee, could be a tiny Lada 1500) whizzing dangerously through the shaded intersections of Rudaki Avenue, equally scornful of traffic signals and pedestrians as of the sour-faced militia that hang thick as bats along the main drags of the capital, Dushanbe. Not too long ago the odds on being kidnapped and then murdered, or shot in the crossfire of street fights were definitely better than the first two scenarios. 
 
So, on the face of it, things have improved in Tajikistan. Gangsters may be bad drivers but at least snipers aren’t drawing a bead on you when you go shopping. Tajikistan’s society fell apart the same moment the Soviet Union declared itself null and void. Seventy years of communist wall papering had done nothing but thinly cover the rifts that had been cracking across the landscape for centuries. Northern Tajiks, long the “blessed ones” of the political system began to squabble with uppity, uncouth Southerners. Democrats from Dushanbe and Islamicists from the isolated, honey producing Karategin valley joined forces against Communist party hacks. Ethnic Uzbeks, Russians and Germans were attacked, harassed and forced to quit the country. Fighting broke out in the streets of Dushanbe and carried on for five years. Tens of thousands of Tajiks fled into Afghanistan (could there be a worse place on earth to seek refuge?) as hundreds of thousands more became displaced within the country. 

Tajikistan, like many other recently independent states, is one of the lost nations of our world. Though not yet a failed state, Tajikistan is falling with increasing velocity towards the bottom of the misery stakes. It has always been a poor country and except for a couple of centuries a millennium ago, when Tajiks were the undisputed rulers of this part of the world, holding the northern borders of the first Islamic Persian empire, the Tajik people have always been lesser partners in the power arrangements of Central Asia. The fabled cities of Bukhara (ascetic and spare), and Samarkand (opulent and gregarious), are their proudest contribution to world civilization. But with the gradual loss of the northern realms to Turkic tribes the Tajiks were unequivocally usurped and subjugated to a life of cultural domination and political irrelevance. Until, that is, 1924, when the new Soviet state carved out a Tajik Autonomous Region. For the first time the Tajiks began to imagine themselves as a distinct national group. The Tajiks’ feelings toward the Soviet Union were, not unnaturally, largely positive. They were grateful for bringing them into the world. And being part of a sprawling powerful Union gave the tiny land-locked country much greater security and prosperity than it would have been able to acquire on its own. If there was any doubt about what their fate could have been without the Soviet Union, one only has to glance south of the border to the basket case called Afghanistan. Ten years ago, when Tajikistan followed the general trend and declared its independence the occasion was a cheerless event. Those once fond feelings have given way to bitterness and regret. The civil war that broke out almost immediately achieved little of positive consequence. The industry, farms and orchards of the most dependent economy of the former Soviet Union (40% of the budget had come in direct subsidy from Moscow) fell into utter neglect and disrepair. Nothing was produced and very little grown. Factories stood as empty as the revolutionary slogans that had suddenly fallen out of vogue. Bazaars were deserted. Restaurants were beyond imagination. Since an UN-brokered peace settlement four years ago Tajikistan has struggled to find its way in the big bad frightening world marketplace. It will be years before the people of this country enjoy the standard of living they had as Soviets when time extended securely into the future and holidays in Georgia were assured. 
 
Ten years after independence there remains little warm feeling for the capitalist, free market and democratic jargon their leaders mouth each day in the smudgy, thin, state-controlled newspapers. Hunger and poverty are growing in Tajikistan. The World Bank estimates that 96% of the people live on less than $28 a month. More than a third live on less than $5. Forty one percent of children under five years of age are seriously malnourished and weigh less than children their age in all except the poorest countries. Basic buying power is the issue in this country. Most Tajiks don’t have any. There is no work and what is available pays a paltry sum. Many agriculture workers working the old state and collective cotton farms have not seen a wage for three years. In most households outside of the capital (and increasingly here as well) the day’s meal is a loaf of round naan bread and tea. Russians, once the prime beneficiaries of the system, but now among the poorest, have taken to stewing dogs in some urban centers. Poverty can be measured in any number of ways. But if you calculate the degree to which a people’s standard of living has fallen (evaporated nearly overnight) then the collapse of most of the Soviet-dependent societies has produced one of the cruelest forms of privation. Recently I visited the home of a deaf pensioner who receives a small donation of American wheat flour and vegetable oil. The effects of a stroke twist his face. His flat, on the first floor of a concrete tower on the outskirts of Dushanbe, is shabby and dark. His trousers are pinned together and his shirt collar is worn; old spectacles off kilter. “I used to be a highly skilled type setter at a publishing house. Now all I can do is cry.” As I left the building I recalled what one man said to me when I asked him what he thought of the new world order. “The Russians used to say ‘We’ll screw you but then we’ll feed you.’ Now we are being fucked but there’s no food.” 

This piece appeared first on the blog Hackwriters in 2003

I lived and worked in Dushanbe, Tajikistan between 1999-2001. Dushanbe is the Tajik word for the second day of the week, (Tuesday) and was named for a historical weekly Tuesday market that had been held in the area for centuries. During the Soviet era the city was known as Stalinabad (1929-1961). With the ‘thaw’ that followed the death of Josef Stalin, the ancient historical name was reinstated.

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Early Morning

Early morning.

Listening to the most amazing birdcall I have ever heard.  A loud series of confident, audacious chirrups, growls, clicks, whistles and scratches.  At times a low coarse growl (very un-bird like) then a piercing whistle or two. Now, one, two, three, four; the strange almost metallic sawing sound like the inner workings of an old office chair that hasn’t been oiled in years. Just as quickly the creature finds its birdness again and lets loose a lovely syncopated series of crystalline, round, delicate squeaks. For a moment it is silent, then as if it were a one-man band playing an upbeat number, (thumping the loose bass strings, the tinkle of the cymbal, the squeak now and then of a sax and a droning harmonica) the concert begins again. Right outside my window.  She taps her beak against the branch on which she is perched, like a maestro tapping the podium. And then as that elongated moment of expectation stretches out, at last, the music, in a frantic tumble of tones, begins again.

This experience, this birdsong, is rare or seems so in this place. It has a lustiness and vibrancy of a tropical setting: a Thailand or southern India.  Not a bleak washed out Central Asian winter morning. But it is lovely and nearly humourous.  She’s a prophet. A voice from God reminding us that He is always with us-even in the most alien, isolated and uninhabitable places.

It is quiet now. The bird has gone.  In the distance further away and more subdued and barely audible above the morning traffic that is starting to whoosh through the streets, I can hear the slight, timid calls of a flock of small birds. This is how I will recall Russian Asia. Ordered, unspontaneous, uninspired. But how also will I remember Khojand—-in the winter nonetheless-—for the laughably unexpected concert that woke me up and got me on my way.

Khojand, Tajikistan. 2001

A Note on the Image

Titled ‘The Great Hornbill’ this painting dates from between 1620-40 C.E. (1030-50 Hijri). The artist, Mansur, was a leading nature painter at the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir; around 1600, he briefly also practiced as an illuminator. The emperor took a passionate interest in the natural world and established a compendium of natural history with Mansur’s help.


Mansur was extraordinarily talented for scientific documentation. His detailed careful depictions of plants and animals avoided all personal expression and are extremely valuable for their scientific accuracy as well as their artistic perfection. He became known as Ustad Mansur (‘Master Mansur’), and the emperor bestowed him with the title Nadir-ul-`Asr (‘Miracle of the Age’). The artist accompanied Jahangir on some of his travels and was then in charge of the documentation of plants and animals. Many of his paintings were left unsigned, and only one of his flower paintings can be clearly attributed to him today.

The Mughals (a corruption of the word, Mongols) were at their imperial apex at the time of Emperor Jahangir. They had conquered India several generations earlier and traced their lineage to the fearsome warrior/ruler, Tamerlane (Timur). I wrote this piece in the ancient city of Khojand (Leninabad), an ancient Silk Road city situated at the entrance to the Fergana Valley, the ancestral homeland of the Mughals.

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What’s in a name?

The phrase that names this blog is a hackneyed one and one that seems to have popped simultaneously and spontaneously into a number of heads at the same time.  It is now a dull commonplace that elicits grunts of acknowledment rather than laughs of revelation which it was designed to do.

It’s been used as a descriptor of all those who toil in ‘Aidland’ the vast global financial, institutional and spiritual infrastructure of those involved in delivering ‘aid’ to people in the ‘developing world’ or ‘global South’. Those people in the blue vests and red or orange hats with their employer’s logo splashed across them whom we see on TV in the immediate wake of a flood, tsunami, war or earthquake.

There is a whole school of research and writing on these people (of whom I am one) and perhaps one day I’ll read some it.  But I am not interested in Aidland, or aid workers here in this piece.  Rather, I’m interested in understanding why, when it came to naming this blog, this phrase jumped instantaneously to mind.

I was born into an actual missionary family in India.  I am an MK, a missionary kid.  I have done some pretty mercenary things in my life and know the temptations of that character.  As for misfit? Aren’t we all?

What has inspired this blog is a frustration with how I make sense of my world. Of my experience as a mid-60s male who has had a privileged life. And there is an urge within me to, in some way, document my journey. Not because it is particularly unique or dramatic but because I have never had the time or space to reflect on it.  To see how and whether and why these three strains of my personality and identity come together. Or don’t. Perhaps they are just frayed loose ends.

I’ve thought of writing a memoir. Perhaps an autobiography. What about a fictionalized life of a former missionary kid turned aid worker called Nate? But all attempts have fizzled. I haven ‘t been able to summon the energy to finish such a project.

But I have been writing all my life.  Short pieces, novels, the first draft of a history book, text books, articles on music, politics, ‘Aidland’ and strange figures of history. I’ve written sitreps and reports on humanitarian disasters, and hundreds of funding proposals.  I’ve translated books from Urdu to English. I’ve edited newsletters. I’ve written thousands of letters (though none in the last 25 years). Writing things down is how I validate myself and express myself.  Some people like to chat.  I write.

I’ve been blogging a long time too. I began in 2010 and since then have launched many blogs mostly on music, but also about photography and memoir. It’s a medium I know and understand and enjoy.  After months of hemming and hawing about whether to join Substack, I’ve decided to remain a blogger.  And use this new blog as a sort of laboratory, factory and think-tank; a messy sangam of the various streams that make up each of our lives.

Rather than a single volume ‘memoir’ this blog fills in as my ‘autobiography’.  Read this and you should get a pretty good idea of who I am and how I got from a missionary hospital in south India to the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. 

Before I leave, let me riff on the triple-barreled phrase that fronts this blog.

How can you tell how long a missionary has been in India?  Notice how they react to fly in their tea.  1-2 years, they grimace and politely push the cup of tea away. 5 years, they delicately pick the fly out and flick it on the floor.  10 years or more, they squeeze the fly of all the tea juices that have entered his drowned body and continue to sip the tea.