The Internet Strikes Back!

Up until this week, it's safe to assume that very few Americans had ever heard of SOPA or PIPA, much less formed an opinion about them.

But all of that changed when the Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia joined forces to make all of us realize what our world would be like without a free and unfettered net. Google blacked out its logo, Wikipedia's English version went offline, and site after site offered links for users to contact their representatives in Washington to protest these proposed bills.

By the end of the day on January 19th, Google had collected over 7 million signatures opposing SOPA and PIPA, and members of Congress, even those who had supported the bills, were practically tripping over themselves to run away from them. For the moment, SOPA and PIPA are off the table, but it's unlikely that Hollywood and the Chamber of Commerce will give up easily.

There are so many things wrong with SOPA and PIPA that it is difficult to know where to start, but perhaps the most obvious one is how these bills distort the balance of power between a creator and an end user under copyright law. According to these bills, the movie and record industries would be entitled to a “private right of action” in which they could directly target any site they believe is dedicated to or even “facilitating” infringement of copyright and have full immunity for doing so if their claims are proven false.

Not only is this a recipe for blackmailing any website hosting material a corporation doesn't want public; it would also eviscerate any remaining rights to the “fair use” provision of copyright law. No one would want to play the Talking Heads' “I want to make him stay up all night” as background music for their baby videos, or parody Lady Gaga's “Telephone,” since it it could be interpreted as “infringement” according to these bills, and no internet provider would take the risk of hosting this kind of material on its site. These bills would foster a “guilty until proven innocent” atmosphere on the web that would be tantamount to corporate censorship and destructive of the kind of creativity that thrives on the access the internet offers to all kinds of art, media, and information.

But the most frustrating thing about these bills is that this kind of legislation has been proven over and over again not to work. Since the 1976 Copyright Law, content providers have gone to Congress sixteen times to create more and more restrictive copyright laws, and these laws have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem of pirated copies and illegal downloads. Taking down websites will not stop piracy, and prosecuting people for downloading movies and music will not ensure that they then purchase a legal copy.

In fact, one reason that music sales are on the rise again, may well be that new technological devices like the iPhone and iPad are making people want more content accessible all the time. Yet the corporate content providers continue to try to muzzle the very technology that increases demand for what they supply.

I am not denying that illegal downloading is an issue. The very qualities that make the Internet so attractive and so powerful are also those that can make it quite a dangerous place. Every flavor of pornography is accessible with a few keystrokes, viruses come disguised as love letters, and there are few of us left who have not received one of those “our database has been hacked” notifications, meaning that some unscrupulous person now knows our name, address, and other private information.

But these dangers do not stop us from using the Internet every day (and probably every hour) of our lives. In fact, what I find so exhilarating about yesterday's protests is the way the Internet can magnify the voices of individuals into something so powerful that it can topple governments and turn corporate lobbying on its head.

Yesterday millions of people used the Internet to strike back at legislation written by corporate lobbyists solely for the benefit of corporate media that would have undermined our fundamental values of free speech, fair use, and the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. We witnessed more than the defeat of some terrible legislation; we also witnessed democracy in action on an unprecedented scale, and that is truly something to celebrate.

My Children are from Mars, Mercury, and a Galaxy Far Far Away

When you head home from the hospital with a little bundle in an infant car seat, you worry about sleepless nights, developmental milestones, and how you're ever going to pay for childcare, much less college.

What you don't really think about is that somewhere in that tiny little body is a unique and often unfathomable individual who will very soon develop a will of its own.

While I never had very distinct ideas of what I wanted my children to become and considered myself too “progressive” to slot them into the conventional triad of doctor/lawyer/business professional, I did have half-formed dreams of them winning awards, playing in an orchestra, or at least making the honor roll.

And then they started growing up, and my expectations met the irresistible twin forces of personality and peer pressure.

My oldest (the one from Mars) was very independent and cared little for convention. In preschool, he decided that it was cool to wear knee socks pulled up all the way over his knees, and soon his best friend's mom was calling me to ask me, “Where did you get those socks? My son won't go to school without them!”

In elementary school, he came up with his own Halloween costumes based on characters from book like Roald Dahl's The BFG. The year he dressed up as Pippi Longstocking, complete with bright red wig and pig tails, I remember one parent looking at me and saying, “That's Mars? I thought he was a girl,” and then turning bright red in case I took offense.

In middle school, he insisted on taking up martial arts and giving up dance, despite having the chance to fulfill his mother's dream of seeing him on stage in a leading role in The Nutcracker.

By high school, I knew very well that I could offer Mars advice, and he would smile and then do what he wanted anyway.

My youngest son (Mercury) was born almost ten years after his older brother and spent the first five years of his life as the object of adoring attention. We were so happy when we uttered his first word, “bubble” in a tiny breathy voice that we didn't realize he would never stop talking.

Mercury is always in motion and in close orbit around his older brothers. As a person who is uncomfortable around weapons of any kind and squeamish about depictions of violence,it was quite disconcerting to have a child who begged for an air soft gun from the age of eight and got his brother to convince me that it was “okay” for him to play Modern Warfare.

If there is a child who fit classic definition of ADD/HD, it is Mercury, and that can make life as a mother a little exhausting. I've been known to tell him after repeated badgering to make sure I'm listening, “No, I'm not listening. You've been talking nonstop, and I need a little break. Please!”

Peer pressure plays a considerable role in Mercury's view of the world, and that means I have become even more of an “embarrassment” to him than I ever was to any of the others.

Yet Mercury has also fulfilled one of my cherished maternal dreams. He plays the violin very well and will soon be much better than I ever was.

And then there is my second son, who seems to exist somewhere in a galaxy far, far way. He has been my most challenging and enigmatic child. Galaxy is the kind of quiet, unassuming young man that adults love and small children flock to.

He has a natural athletic grace and could play any sport on a competitive level, except that he only likes to compete against himself. On a long board or a surf board, he is a wonder to behold, and when he's not doing that, he's likely in his room, playing the guitar and composing music.

If you ask my children what they want to become when they grow up, Mars is practically there. In May he'll graduate from college with a degree in Political Communication, fluent Arabic, and a plan to go to law school. Mercury, on the other hand, is still torn between wanting to blow things up and his desire to become a race car driver.

And Galaxy is still somewhere far, far away contemplating his options.

Twenty-one years ago I would never have imagined being the mother of three such different individuals, and I know that's a good thing. Because if I've learned anything, it's that parenting is as much a process of letting go of expectations as it is of watching over and directing a child's path.

These three boys will find their own orbit, and I won't be the center of their universe any longer. But there will always be a gravitational pull between us, the familial tie of parent and child, and I trust that this force will keep us within the same ambit.

New Year's Resolutions

Every January thousands of people make resolutions. Some start visiting a gym or join Weight Watchers. Some give up smoking or tear up credit cards to prevent shopping sprees. Studies show that for most individuals, the failure to keep New Year's resolutions hovers somewhere between 78% and 88%. We are truly creatures of habit, and those habits that are most deeply embedded in the wiring of our brains are the hardest to break.

Still almost half of us make New Year's Resolutions every year despite the daunting odds, demonstrating that perhaps the easiest New Year's resolution to make is to resolve to continue making New Year's resolutions.

A week ago, on the first day of 2012, I participated in this annual ritual, but the most important resolution I made was this: I promised myself that I would appreciate what I have.

It sounds like a simple proposition, but it's not easy to put into practice.

People tend to take what they have for granted. We forget that the very senses we possess-- sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—form our essential connections to the world around us. Isolated in an office or a car or our living rooms, we cannot experience the warmth or cold of the weather; the rustle of trees or the cry of a bird; the smell of freshly mowed grass or the taste of a ripe blackberry growing wild along the road.

But it's not just the physical world that eludes our consciousness. Too often, we find ourselves talking to people but not really listening to what they say. Before anyone has had a chance to finish a sentence or two, we're already formulating a response, thinking about our next appointment, or worse yet, surreptitiously glancing at our cell phones. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, very few of us can remember the last time we just sat on a park bench and did nothing at all except be in the moment, exercising a deliberate awareness of everything around us.

This past December I realized that I was spending far too much of my own life in this kind of sensory and social deprivation. Like Lewis Carroll's White Queen, I was running as fast as I could only to stay in the same place, and worst of all, I was losing my sense of connection to the people I love.

So New Year's Day has come and gone, and I still have this resolution to fulfill. While I'm riding my bike, I feel the crispness of the air rushing past. When I'm out walking the dogs, I smile at the people who are approaching me on the sidewalk. When I'm with friends, I try to take a moment and think how lucky I am to have them and how lonely my world would be without them. When my kids are driving me crazy, I try to stop myself from yelling at them and remember to give them a hug because I love them.

Of course, my efforts to appreciate what I have are often thwarted by the small insults and irritations of daily life: a driver cuts me off; I'm infuriated by some irrational act of Congress; my son leaves his shoes where I can trip on them for the umpteenth time; my husband fails to understand my directive to leave silverware in the side of the sink where forks and spoons won't fall into the garbage disposal and get chewed up.

And then there are the twin distractions of fear and envy: What if I can't pay my bills this month? What if my new business never works out? Why can't I afford to remodel my house like everyone else? Why don't I have the relatives with cabin near Tahoe? Those distractions can keep me suspended in a feverish anxiety about a possible future that may or may not ever come true.

But in reality all of us only ever experience the present moment. Today, this house, this family, these friends, these possessions are all that I have, and I can choose to see them as sufficient for now or choose to disparage them because they don't live up to my expectations of what might be.

The Gospel according to Matthew puts the case this way: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” (6:4).

I don't advocate living my life with no thought of the future, and my focus on what is sufficient looks more towards the joy than the pain of daily living, but the apostle's sense of where we might best invest our attention is exactly on the mark. All I have is today, and with luck, the tomorrow that will become today. That's why my resolution is more than a New Year's ritual; it's a resolution I am making for my life to be the best it can be right now.

The Blog is Back

I made my last post to Springs to Mind in August of 2009 when I took a full-time job. Now, after a two-year hiatus, I'm coming back to blogging with more thoughts and reflections from an almost 50-something woman living in Silicon Valley with three kids, two poodles, one husband, and no Prius.

The Wise Latina Woman was Right

This morning Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, making her the first Latina and the third woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

During her confirmation hearings, Justice Sotomayor was excoriated over and over again over her comment in a speech about the specific wisdom of a “wise Latina woman.” Here is the exact quote:

Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Sotomayor was responding to an assertion, often attributed to Sandra Day O'Connor, that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.” Sotomayor argued against the presumption that gender, race, ethnicity, class, and life experience do not have an influence on how we make judgments even if we as individuals are consciously striving to be reasonable and impartial in our treatment of all parties in the case at hand.

And Sotomayor, is absolutely right. The weight of recent research in psychology and the emerging fields of cognitive and neuroscience show that our experiences and our emotions, our sense of who we are and what groups we feel an affiliation with, all of this affects, though it does not determine, how we make decisions.**

Take gender, for example. We need only look at the recent Supreme Court decision, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, which ruled that a school district illegally conducted a strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl, to recognize that the presence of a woman on the court was an important factor in the Court's decision-making process. In the oral arguments, Justice Breyer suggested that it was “no big deal when kids strip. After all, they do it for gym class all the time.” Outraged, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg responded angrily that “boys may like to preen in the locker room but girls, particularly teen-aged girls, do not” (See NPR transcript for April 21,2009.)

As a woman, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood , in ways that the other male justices could not, how traumatic it would be for a thirteen-year-old girl to undergo such a search. In a culture that simultaneously hypersexualizes the female body and yet assumes that pubescent girls are both sexually innocent and modest, it's inevitable that young women feel much more anxiety and embarrassment about the physical evidence of sexual maturity and do not want to strip in front of strangers. The girl who experienced the strip search developed stomach ulcers, a clear symptom that being forced to strip down to her underwear and then pull those garments away from her body was far different for her than changing her clothes for gym class.

This is not to say that I believe strip searches of students on such flimsy evidence as the school district had in this case is any more justified for boys than it is for girls. But Ginsburg recognized that gender made a difference in how much more negatively it could affect a young woman. Ultimately the majority of the court agreed with her and the decision ruled against the school district and in favor of the young woman.

What Judge Sotomayor was talking in about in her speech was precisely the kind of effect that Ginsburg's comment can have when judges are trying to reach a consensus about a particular case. In her “wise Latina” speech, Sotomayor stated: “I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School...that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought.” She then went on to argue that “whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

This is not an argument in favor of a particular cultural, ethnic, racial, or gender bias. Rather it is an argument that since we all have these biases built into the very neural networks of our brain, our conscious awareness of them can bring new perspectives to the process of judging, just as Ruth Bader Ginsburg's tart comment on adolescent nudity, brought a new dimension to the case at hand and gave the male justices some insight into what thirteen-year-old Savana Redding might have felt the day she was strip-searched.

In fact, the more we are aware of our emotions and the processes we use to reach decisions, and most importantly, the more we are exposed to the life experiences of others who are not like us, the more we are able to expand the range of internal perspectives we use to make decisions that don't simply reinforce our inherent predilections.

In her “wise Latina” speech, Judge Sotomayor demonstrated that she is very much aware of the balance we must strike between drawing on our own experience and the need to try understand the experiences of others in striving to achieve our best semblance of impartiality. As she put it: “The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.

For these reasons, Judge Sotomayor's presence on the Supreme Court represents not just a symbolic victory for diversity, but a real and practical one. As she has said, "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage." In a society where women constitute about half the population, and as we rapidly move towards the day when there is no single majority race or ethnicity in the United States, that kind of self-awareness and openness to other experiences is precisely what we need more of on the highest court in the land

***In his seminal work, Descartes' Error, Antonio Damasio, Professor of Neurology at USC, argues that the ideal of pure reason championed by philosophers from Plato to Kant is wrong. Instead, he argues that “certain aspects of emotion and feeling are indispensable for rationality. At their best, feelings point us in the proper direction, take us to the appropriate place in a decision-making space, where we may put the instruments of logic to good use,” (“Introduction,” p. xiii). More recent work in neuroscience has confirmed and expanded Damasio's findings.

Goethe Slept Here (Not)

In June of this year I traveled through the countryside of Germany to small towns that do not show up on most maps. I was searching for the places my forebearers used to live and feeling grateful to my brother-in-law for the loan of his GPS navigation system, since I would have been utterly lost without it.

As far as I know all of my ancestors for three or four generations back arrived in the United States from Germany. My father's father came from Steinbach-Hallenberg, a beautiful village in a narrow valley of the state of Thuringia in the forests of central Germany. My mother's family came from the province of Mecklenburg, a land of small lakes and rolling fields near the Baltic Sea. My maternal great-grandfather was from the tiny village of Viezen, and my great-great-grandfather from Dargun, a town that produces one of the best beers I've ever tasted.

All of these towns lie in the Eastern part of Germany, and for much of my parents' adult lives were inaccessible to them because of two world wars and then the heavily guarded border that separated East Germany from the West. To my great regret, both my parents died without ever having the chance to see the homeland of their ancestors.

To reach these places I traveled extensively in what had been Eastern Germany, and saw first-hand what twenty years of investment has accomplished: here you find brand new stretches of autobahn, gleaming colorful town squares and Aldtstadts, and ongoing construction everywhere. But while Leipzig and Dresden and Berlin, and even smaller cities like Jena, have reaped the economic benefits of all this investment, the smaller towns have found the reintegration of the two Germanies to be a double-edged sword. Everywhere you see the care these towns have taken to restore their buildings and homes, but their inhabitants are largely from an older generation. Their children have mainly left for jobs in the West or in the larger cities of the East. I spent a poignant late afternoon in the town square of Schmalkalden. Despite its central role as the place where Protestant princes drew up articles with Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon to defend their rights, this historic town's central square was practically deserted.

Yet what I also found in small towns like Schmalkalden, Steinbach-Hallenberg, and Dargun was a warmth and eagerness to share information with an American like myself who was seeking her roots. An American tourist is a rare bird here. Yet more and more of us are coming back to these towns in search of our ancestry just as their own townspeople are rediscovering and celebrating their own history.

And small-town Germans, it turns out, have a wonderful sense of humor. As I was walking the streets of Steinbach-Hallenberg, down the very street where my own ancestors once lived from the 1600s to the end of the 19th-century, one of my cousins pointed out a sign on a house nearby. From street distance it read: “Hier wohnte Goethe” echoing the hundreds of placards you find everywhere in towns like Frankfurt, Leipzig, Strasbourg, Weimar and Jena that can rightly claim to have housed Germany's most famous poet. And yet, as my cousin pointed out laughing, if you stepped a little closer and glimpsed behind the fence, you could see the word at the bottom of the sign that not only denied its claim but also played off the maddening tendency of German grammar to leave the most important words for the end of sentences. “Hier wohnte Goethe...nie” or literally “Here lived Goethe (never).”

Towns like Steinbach-Hallenberg and Dargun know full well that they are not on the main intineraries of foreign tourists. They are not listed in Frommer's or the Michelin Guides. But that is precisely part of their charm. To reach them you drive on winding highways through forests or fields where wildflowers bloom on the sides of the road. You find a strawberry field and eat the most delicious fruit you've ever tasted straight from the field. You climb up a steep path to a ruined castle that locals visit on their daily walk. When you're having dinner at one of the family-run restaurants in town, you might hear the owner playing guitar or wonder what the children in the back room really think of a dubbed episode of The Simpsons. You can ask the hotel clerk where to find the local pastor so you can ask about church records, and have another guest tell you, “Of course I know him, he's a great guy (ein toller Mann)."

And what you will find more and more often are great sources of local history. In Steinbach-Hallenberg, the Museum of Metalwork shows you just how much hard work went into making the corkscrews, metal instruments and nails that were the main industry for centuries. In Dargun, where dairy farming and brewing beer are the main sources of income, a new small museum has opened documenting the historical farming and dairy practices of the region (Uns lütt Museum). Just behind this museum lie the ruins of a beautiful Cistercian abbey dating back to the 12th century as well as palace grounds and buildings that date back to the 17th-century when the monastery became the residence of the Dukes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Destroyed in the final days of World War II, it is about to undergo a massive restoration. Every summer the monastery and palace grounds host a festival of light with fireworks that shine on the nearby Kloster Lake.

Even if you don't have any specific reason to go quite as far off the beaten track as I did in seeking my family roots, I found plenty of small German towns that warrant the attention of the more adventurous tourist including Bamberg, with its grand cathedral, or Schwerin, which has an impressive Chambord-like castle that also escaped the devastation of World War II, or the highly under-touristed Schmalkalden, which was one of the most historically fascinating towns I visited. For anyone traveling Europe by car (and with GPS) taking a detour off the autobahn, autopiste, or other highway is well worth the time and effort. You never know what might lie around the bend, and taking the time to explore the unknown is more than half the fun of travel.

A Family Reunion in Steinbach-Hallenberg

On Saturday, June 20th I finally met my German cousins in Steinbach-Hallenberg. Separated by two World Wars, and the division of Germany into East and West until 1990, it has taken three generations for our families to reconnect, but the sense of kinship was palpable when I cross the main street of my ancestral hometown and shook hands with Rolf, Helmut, Werner, and Lothar Wahl.

Steinbach-Hallenberg is a small town nestled in a valley inside the Thuringen forest in Central Germany. In winter, it is a ski area, but in summer, it is host to many German hikers (or Wanderers). Its red roofs stand out in colorful contrast to the green hills surrounding it and many of the houses are covered with beautiful slate siding in intricate designs. The valley seemed quite narrow and deep as we entered it, and despite the fact the river running through it, die Hasel, is hardly bigger than a small stream, you often catch the sound water flowing by as small stone canals (literally “steinbach”) carry mountain runoff through the town.

Driving into Steinbach-Hallenberg sent a chill down my spine because I'd felt as if I were fulfilling not only a dream of my own but also of my father who died in 1978, long before reunification was even dreamed of. I had anticipated this meeting with much excitement and not a little trepidation. Would my cousins be as eager to meet me as I was to meet them? What would I learn about my family history? What would they want to know about the American side of the family? And most of all, would my recently resurrected German suffice to make conversation possible?

I need not have worried about the warmth of my welcome, and it was clear that Rolf Wahl had planned our visit with great care. First we toured the Metalwerksaftmuseum (Museum of Metalcraft) with Veronika Jung, the Museum's Director. This is one of the many new museums that are springing up in small German towns, as their inhabitants express their pride in their heritage by creating a place to document a way of life that is fast disappearing in more urban centers.

Inside the museum, Veronika began by greeting us in English, but she gave most of the tour quite slowly in clear German so that I could understand just about everything she told us. The museum is located in two houses, one of which was moved from another site with everything intact – the nail-making apparatus, all the tools, and a number of patents. The family (die Recknagel) had no children, and they wanted to give the remains of their business to the museum to preserve. It was impressive to see how much thought and energy had gone into a preservation process that required raising one of the buildings off its foundation and then moving it through small village streets to its new site.

For me this discovery of the tool-making history of Steinbach-Hallenberg generated a good deal of emotion.. In the museum I found the first tangible piece of evidence about my paternal great-grandfather, Peter Wilhelm Wahl who died in 1893 at the relatively young age of 52. I knew that his death had precipated his family's departure from Germany when his widow, Marie Bauerschmidt, decided to take her children, including my grandfather, Adolph, aged 8 and travel to America.

Peter Wilhelm had been a master locksmith, and museum has in its possession a book that recorded sales of special tools. So here I was actually holding history in my hand and seeing the page where Peter's name was written and the number of corkscrews he sold. I was almost moved to tears thinking what it would have meant to my father to be able to hold this document as well because I knew he had always longed to return to his homeland.

At the end of the tour we watched a smith make a corkscrew and then a hand-mail nail. It sounds like such a simple thing but it was back-breaking work when people in the town had to make thousands of nails a week just to survive. My cousins who are about about twenty to thirty years old than I am remembered seeing men who literally bent over from the effects of such hard labor, and Rolf emphasized that the nail-makers were the poorest of the townspeople and lived in the smallest houses, often with eight or ten children, all of whom helped out with the family trade.

Many of these hand-made nails were beautiful objects with different decorative heads on them for use in fine furniture. My father's autobiography mentions that a nail factory had closed down in Steinbach-Hallenberg in the years before Peter Wilhelm's death, but Veronika Jung told me that there were actually many nail and corkscrew factories in the area, almost all of them small family firms.
By the turn of the century, it was getting harder and harder to make a living from nail-making. A cigar factory opened up which used imported tobacco from Florida and Cuba and employed many women in the town, including Rolf's grandmother. Metalworking expanded to include production of many different kinds of tongs and other specialized metal implements.

Today in Steinbach-Hallenberg you can still see these small family enterprises, like the metal workshop whose very modern equipment is located in a house once owned by Rolf's great uncle. But it delighted me to see that in a small town where records of my ancestors as date back to the 16th century, the spirit of the family entrpreneur continues to reinvent itself. Just down the street from the metal workshop, Rolf pointed out to me a sign hanging on the house of another probably Karen Wahl, advertising not metalworking but IT services!

From Blogger Pictures