Ireland 1994: Birth of a backpacker

This blog has been going for a few years now, but its focus hasn't always been travel. Somewhere along the line I went from being a (more or less) happy passenger in the backseat of my parents' car, to traveling independently. I didn't always post about my travels, but I always wrote about them. The useful things, the indiscretions, mostly moments I experienced that made that trip unique and different from anyone else's. Then one day, I decided they might be useful for readers too.

On what trip did I become what they call a backpacker? Was it Germany in 2008? Wales in 2002? Or even earlier, southern Ireland in December 1994?

"Backpacking" means two different things. It can mean hiking with all your gear to camp overnight; this requires the kind of a big frame backpack that can hold a tent, sleeping bag, etc. "Backpacking" in international travel means traveling light (and relatively cheaply), not carrying a suitcase. These are sometimes confused, including by travelers themselves, who buy, and can then be seen carrying, the type of backpack you'd need for trekking in a national park. The Discreet Traveler means a regular backpack, ideally the size that can fit as carry-on luggage on a plane.

That first time I went off traveling with nothing but a backpack, I was twenty-one. It's a nice stereotypical age for a backpacker. The Republic of Ireland seemed like a good place to start. There was no language barrier, at least not more than there is in England, where I'd been living for six months. It seemed almost wrong not to make the short hop across the Irish Sea. Because I wasn't prepared to drive myself around, I booked a week's tour of Dublin, Galway city, and Cork.

When I say "tour": I had hostel beds booked in the three cities and "coach" (bus) tickets in between. There was no guide or other impediment to independent travel. I exchanged currency--in those days, Ireland used the punt--packed the same backpack I'd been carrying around as a student, and flew to Dublin.

I know I was wearing a warm coat, because it was winter. Other than that, I couldn't have been carrying many clothes. I must have washed them out in the bathroom sink, as on subsequent trips. Funny how such a detail, which sounds like such a pain in advance, is totally inconsequential in the memory.

I remember walking down the high street in Dublin and seeing a chalkboard sign for a vegetarian restaurant that turned out to be cheap and delicious, as vegetarian food often is. I saw a flyer in the hostel for a Dublin literary pub crawl. It was to be the evening after I visited the Dublin Writers Museum, so I would actually have heard of Brendan Behan and the other writers they were talking about.

It was a great time. There were a number of us including a couple Australian girls and a Norwegian guy who was at the upper limit of the old 18-35 age range (hostels aren't "youth" anymore). It seemed wild then, that someone so much older was backpacking around the way we were. I'd assumed that, by 35, everyone would at least have a mortgage, if not kids.

(Cut to myself, turning 35 in a bud-ridden bedsit, newly single, no savings to speak of...but that's another backpacking trip.)

Two actors told us about the writers of Dublin, reciting from their work as we moved from pub to pub. I drank Guinness and Harp. By the time we got to our final stop, I was ready for a quiz question: Name a writer from Ireland who has won the Nobel Prize in literature. I'd just been to the museum so I named Samuel Beckett. Who wrote in French, but never mind; where you're born is the only thing that matters in these isles.

The prize was either a Jameson's duffel bag, or a bottle of their whiskey. I chose the whiskey.*

On the other side of the (admittedly small) country, whom did I run into on a street in Galway but those same Australian girls! I've learned since that this is not remarkable in travel; you tend to run into people down the road. It's nice if you've been friendly or helpful to them in the first place.

You might think I'm straining a metaphor for life, but I think all travel is that.

By Cork, I was over this trip. Only the local stout, Murphy's, stood out, as I preferred it to Guinness (and I'd had a generous amount of that free at the brewery back in Dublin). Cork airport was as small as my native Tri-Cities at the time. A driver (pre-booked) bumped over the gravelly road. I got lovely Irish butter with my bread on the plane. Yes, an hour's flight included food and drink. This was Europe!

The taste for packing light and taking off with only a small backpack has never left me. I haven't always traveled that way, but it's my favorite. There's nothing so freeing. I don't need cars or even to tell anyone, exactly, where I'm going. Because I may not know.

*I was to hold this souvenir of Ireland until I accomplished one of my life's great goals: to emigrate to Canada. It would be almost six years before I'd land in Toronto and finally open that bottle.

France 2000: Lessons for a safer and better trip

I took many trips before I started this blog. Part of the joy of travel--perhaps the main joy--is looking back over the travels you've already been on, and reliving the pleasures and even the challenges. Writing them down at the time or shortly thereafter helps, of course. It's only a bonus to be able to go back and share those adventures with readers now.

My first trip to France was in 1992 but I want to share some anecdotes from my second visit, in February 2000. That's because it's a good snapshot of some of the bad, or at least hard, things that can happen during travel, and also why it's all worth it. What I learned in France in 2000 is a good summary for the rest of The Discreet Traveler's life.

The first thing that happened to me in Paris, after being greeted by my lover who was living there at the time, was that I got pickpocketed. In more than twenty years of international travel, this was the only bad thing that has ever happened to me (long flight delays and cancellations, while annoying, are First World problems that I don't consider as having caused me any harm). I want to emphasize that, because while I drew several lessons from the experience, it was highly exceptional. It also was not that "bad" in the way that an outright robbery, or violent crime would be bad. That's the most important thing I learned from the experience. Here are a few more:

1. It was avoidable. No, I don't by any stretch believe that criminals aren't responsible for their crimes, but that doesn't mean travelers shouldn't take sensible precautions. Me getting pickpocketed was an opportunistic theft. The thief could see that he had here a tired, jet-lagged foreigner who had never been on the train in from the airport before and was preoccupied with talking to my companion, looking at the signs, etc. If I hadn't been so tired and preoccupied, I would have noticed him moving in and gradually sliding open the zipper on my bag--movements I clearly recalled once I got off the train and realized my wallet was gone. Don't give lazy thieves easy opportunities like this.

2. It's hard to avoid jet lag or being distracted, but it's not hard to prepare properly. Wearing one of those "fanny packs" or "bum bags" was a really bad idea; I've never done it since and don't recommend you do either. They present your valuables on a shelf to any pickpocket happening by. Some people swear by money belts but I find them uncomfortable, and it's awkward to have to dig around under your shirt all the time.

3. Another thing I made sure never to do again was to have all my valuable stuff in one wallet! Cash (yes, Americans, most countries do use it; you'll need some) in one place. Cards in another. Not all cards together. And whatever you do, take only essential cards abroad that you are going to need. I could have done without having to replace my Social Security card, library card, and other things there was no reason for me to have in France anyway. Don't carry pictures or anything irreplaceable.

4. One thing I had read about doing in advance, and was really glad I'd done, was making photocopies of important things like my passport (which fortunately was not stolen), and the front and back of the cards I was carrying. Oh, and keeping those photocopies in a different place from my wallet! It made it so much easier to call the credit card company and cancel the card (everything was done by phone in those days) when I had the numbers right there.

5. Finally, I learned that while this was a bad start to my trip, it was not that bad. Believe it or not, I could carry on a passable conversation in French in person, but as anyone who's studied a language knows it's a lot harder on the telephone, when you have no facial expressions or gestures to guide you. I froze up with the stress and the woman on the phone assured me that it was OK, she spoke English. Don't stress yourself out. It took a detour to a Western Union office where I stood in line and filled out forms, but I got cash. Just like that, there were no problems at all bar a couple follow-up phone calls after I got home (and all but one of those could have been avoided if I hadn't had unnecessary cards with me--see #3).

The rest of the trip was one of the most amazing of my life. I explored Paris and successfully asked for directions in French (a language only comes alive when you stop studying and start using it in real life). We went to Normandy, where everywhere there were signs proclaiming "Welcome to our Liberators"; we visited the beaches where the D-Day landings took place, in a group that included descendants of troops from other nations. I successfully negotiated bus information to Mont Saint-Michel from a hotelier whose English was even shakier than my French (but who, like everyone else I met, was friendly and trying very hard to help us). We got to St-Malo as night was falling, without an advance reservation, and found a room with no problem (I had never tried that before). At the train station ticket office, a man who did speak English was tickled at how "good" my French was. My French was terrible, but the point was I was visiting his country and trying. You have no idea how far that will take you in non-English-speaking countries of the world.

I've been told that this has something to do with my Americanness, and that an English person would have a different experience. I can only say that my British companion had exactly the same experience throughout the trip--but then, she was living in Paris, so of course she was also trying. When confronted with a particularly obnoxious English-speaking couple in a restaurant, we actually tried speaking French with each other, just so nobody would think we were with them!

So, here was a trip with a bad start, but many highlights thereafter. We ate at a restaurant around the corner in the 9e arrondissement called Haynes--sadly, it is no more. It was founded by an American jazz musician who used to live in Paris, and served wonderful soul food. We had tourist experiences but also discovered things about the people and place we never would have, if we hadn't been traveling independently. And, as upset as I was at having been pickpocketed, I did not let it affect the rest of the visit. I got my money and moved on.

It would have been possible to have that initial experience and conclude something about the French, or people of possibly-Arab origin (I did see the guy), or even men in general. There are plenty of people, and women specifically, who are afraid to travel for this reason. But to me, those conclusions would be absurd. I had some of the best bread, wine, and personal interactions of my life on that trip to France. In fact, 2000 turned out to be the best year of my life up to that point.

I'm so glad I didn't stay home.

Back from the U.S.A., and they ask me...

If you’re an American abroad, you might sometimes experience this phenomenon as I have. Morning after morning, I walk in to work, or otherwise encounter British people, and someone asks me about whatever the latest news headline from America is. Often this has to do with guns. The perception in Britain is that every mass shooting is “just another day in America,” and statistically, that is true. Other times the question is “why do Americans not want health care?” or, why would Americans vote against their own economic interests?

I can’t fully answer these questions, and I’m weary of them. How should I really understand “Americans” (that monolithic group) when I haven’t lived there for over 15 years? But the latest round of questions has to do with one of the presidential candidates, of whom, let’s be reasonable, there  shouldn’t even be any yet since the election is next year. How, I am asked, did a celebrity previously famous for being mean on a television show (and being rich) get to be an apparently leading contender for the presidency of the United States?

So here are a few thoughts on that subject. I don’t claim that any of these are original; I’m just pulling together ideas for convenience’s sake. And I hope, by doing so here, not to have to post about him any more.

Since I don’t think he deserves any more publicity from me, I’m not going to repeat his opinions, all of which are easily found on the news. In fact, I’m not even going to name drop—I’ll just nickname this guy Far-right Arsehole Saying Crap and Insisting that Satan is Theotherguy (FASCIST for short). A lot of people, including in the U.S., are worked up about FASCIST and his persistent popularity. Should they be?

First, the scary thing about FASCIST is not what he says, but the fact that so many people like what they hear. In America, anyone can say anything. That’s the great thing about freedom of speech (a right that is curtailed in most other countries, including Great Britain). FASCIST is able to say anything that he wants and, in turn, we are free to judge him on that basis. Why are a lot of Americans still judging him so favorably?

Consider why he can afford to say stuff that would sink any other candidate’s campaign: He’s a gazillionaire. Most other candidates depend on donations and, at some point, would become so controversial that those donations would dry up. He’s immune to that. This appeals to many people: the perception that he is a “self-made man,” that he’s free to say what other people only think. In fact, Republican strategists who don’t support him, but would like their preferred candidates to learn from his success, identify this as his number one advantage: the perception that he cannot be bought. (The only other candidate in this position is Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist.)

Second, FASCIST is appealing to two very rich veins in American politics that have existed about as long as the country has. One is anti-intellectualism. The resentment of education has always been stronger in America than the resentment of wealth. People are readier to forgive someone for being richer than they’ll ever be, than for being professorial. (Personally, I think this explains President Obama’s problem more than racism.) This absolutely baffles non-Americans, almost to the extent that the Second Amendment does. Don’t these Americans know that they’ll never be rich like this guy, that his interests are aligned precisely against theirs? Why do they care more about the values he appeals to than their own economic wellbeing?

Because of the value of anti-intellectualism, facts are not effective against his appeal. For example, recent comments make clear that FASCIST doesn’t know what he is talking about in regard to several subjects: London, its police officers, Islam, and for that matter Christianity. So what? His fans do not care in the least. They don’t know London or Muslims, and they already have their own understanding of Christianity which neither he nor anyone else can shake. They care how they feel.

And this is the other rich vein that has always existed in American politics: nativism. Before the Muslim-bashing took off, Mexican immigrants were bearing the brunt of this, but it’s nothing new. Late in the 19^th century, the long, rich anti-Catholic tradition in America reached new heights in a movement called, appropriately, the Know-Nothings. The laws and arguments of that era were against Catholics and their churches in an eerily similar way to the attacks on Muslims and mosques now. What name could more glory in the anti-intellectualism of America than the Know-Nothings?

From the first (non-European) inhabitants of America, to African slaves, to Catholics, Chinese immigrants, Japanese-Americans, and yes, Jews; there have always been people who threatened “real Americans’” way of life, and in return, they were persecuted to the fullest extent possible. That ranged from genocide to the terrorizing of black Americans and the World War II internment camps. By those standards, we have seen nothing yet.

I don’t mean that fascism shouldn’t be taken seriously. It always should. But it can’t be resisted, or even fully explained, by facts. Not when people understand democracy to mean that their opinions carry equal weight with facts.

They will understand your arguments to be what theirs are: ideology and emotion. They will believe that you are pushing for your agenda out of ideological conviction or [quasi]religious belief—not because, however reluctantly, you have been convinced by inconvenient facts. So before you argue with a FASCIST supporter or start posting memes, be sure that you have.

I hope that the rest of the world need not fear a FASCIST presidency, because Americans will work this out. My opinion is that after the outlying primary election in New Hampshire and caucus in Iowa, some sort of reason will return to the Republican primaries starting in South Carolina. That’s right—reason will return in the state that gave birth to the Civil War and flew the Confederate flag until this year. Now that’s a scary thought.

Rīga, Latvia. October 2015

If you look at a map of the vast continent that comprises Europe and Asia, you'll see a string of imperial powers, from the once-Great Britain in the west to today's rising China in the east. Russia, still the largest country on earth, dominates the eastern half. At the crossroads between Russia and Scandinavia, and the rest of Europe, lie the three Baltic states. The middle of the Baltic states is Latvia, and the bullseye of this entire global game is Rīga, its capital.

Knowing where Rīga is, you can see why it's been dominated by so many different peoples. Even today, only a minority of Rigans speak Latvian as their first language. Since its founding by Germans 800 years ago, the city has been German, Swedish (it was then the largest seaport in the Swedish Empire), Russian, German again in the Nazi era, Russian again in the Soviet era, and finally independent, since 1991. Its first female president, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, who guided her native country into the European Union, had spent most of her life in Canada.

Visitors (other than stag parties) are still a relatively new phenomenon in Latvia, and we were welcomed accordingly. At least in Rīga, the people helping us spoke excellent English, even though it was probably their third language. Compared with Paris or London (The Discreet Traveler loves both, by the way) it is very inexpensive, both to get to and stay in. All the restoration work since independence, though, means that Rīga is an extremely beautiful city to walk around in (it helped that we had nice weather). It has more Art Nouveau buildings, for example, than any other city in the world.

Twenty years ago things were very different. Everyone lived in grim, Soviet-style apartment blocks. There were no people of color or different cultural backgrounds. Today, Latvia, like other E. U. countries, is starting to accept immigrants from other parts of the world, but in those days the only foreign visitors would have been put up in the Hotel Latvija (what is now the Radisson Blu):

At that time the hotel had whole floors dedicated to spying on the guests, and room keys were cumbersome with clunky listening devices. But nowadays it's known for its Skyline Bar, from which we got a wonderful nighttime view of the city (register for the hotel's frequent user points program and you can get in for free).

In the foreground here, you'll see the Freedom Monument. At its base are Latvians striving for freedom; during the Soviet era, laying flowers here would get you sent to Siberia. Curiously, though, the Soviets left the monument in place, preferring to say that the female figure represented Russia holding up Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. (Freedom is actually shown holding the three regions of Latvia.)

Symbols, you see, are very important. Some of the toilets were what I like to call bisexual, a freeing touch, but others bore a curious triangle-circle version of the "male/female" signs. The male symbol is based on the idea that men are all broad shoulders and tapered waists (they wish), while the female symbol, like its Western counterpart, reduces women to a skirt. Be warned.

If you're expecting food in Rīga to be all borscht and potatoes (not that there's anything wrong with that), I fear you'll be disappointed. Everything we had was excellent, whether Russian, Latvian, sushi, or lattes--the last of these universally wonderful! I can't speak for the entire country, but my overall impression was of a very forward-looking place. Latvia has just joined the euro and is in a position to appreciate how much it has gained from the E. U. I realize many Europeans feel quite another way, and I wonder if they appreciate their privileged position.

Some of the most striking buildings in Rīga have been restored from blueprints after bombing destruction, notably the "Blackheads House" and the town hall. The spire of St. Peter's Church (13th century, like the city) has been rebuilt more than once. We got great views from it--you can only go 65 m up, but it has the great merit of having an elevator!

We took time out on a beautiful Friday to visit Jūrmala ("seaside"), at the end of the suburban train line. This was the spa destination for all of the U.S.S.R. It lies on the Baltic Sea, where the River Daugava empties into the Bay of Rīga. I heard it can be chock full in summer, but the beach was almost deserted, and we walked for miles without seeing a single Russian oligarch or trophy wife. (There were a couple of hardy elderly women charging into the sea or down the beach in their swimsuits, though.) The woods come right up to the sand so nothing is spoiled by development. The wooden houses are gorgeous, too, reminding us of Lakeside, Ohio, but I understand they cost millions!

This pristine sand aside, there were a few places I've been that Jūrmala reminded me of. With the unspoiled woods in between the seaside and the railroad tracks, at one point I thought of the late, great train station in South River, Ontario, from where I've set off to canoe adventures in Algonquin Park. Other times we felt like we were on the Toronto Islands. Don't miss the food at 36 Line, a top Russian restaurant on the beach that serves wonderful alus (beer) and pelmeņi (dumplings; think pierogi although I'm sure that must offend somebody). Mine were filled with lamb, in seasonal mushroom broth and with my favorite food in the world: sour cream. If you can't spring for that, try the hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll at the Rīga train station; their skin-snapping goodness took me back to the Cleveland Zoo of my childhood. Don't forget to practice English with the charming, though drunk, Latvian man on the train.

They were filming a period piece outside one of the Art Nouveau buildings on Albert Street. (There were a lot of streets like this with curious names: Albert, Elizabeth, Richard Wagner.) It's hard to walk through this city without constantly photographing. But the most moving picture from my trip was this one.

This represents where where on 23 August 1989, millions of people observed the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. (That was the deal between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, subsequently violated when the latter invaded the former in 1941, occupying Latvia.) On this day, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians formed a human chain right across the Baltic states. Remember, they were not yet independent countries at that stage, but part of the U.S.S.R. This was their way of showing that people were more important.

Thanks to our friend who is a native, we were able to see the opening night of her mom's play in the Art Deco Splendid Theatre. The play was in Russian, of which I know "yes" and "no," so it's safe to say I was relying on visual cues. But it was a great and flower-filled atmosphere, and afterwards I got to meet Sergey Ustinov, a Russian crime novelist. With help from his English-speaking daughter, he shared with me this joke from an American movie:

Non-writer: What do you do for a living?
Writer: I write bestsellers.
Non-writer: Oh? And how are they selling?
Writer: Not too well!

He also quoted to me Leo Tolstoy's advice "if you can not write, don't." Well, I said to Mr. Ustinov, it didn't work for Tolstoy...

Bakio, Basque country, Spain. August-September 2015

Euskal Herria. Those were among the first words I saw in the Basque region, and it is the name the Basque people give to their land. In these parts of Spain, Basque comes first on the signs, followed by Spanish. Basque (Euskara) is one of the oldest languages in the world; it predates the vast Indo-European family of languages, and is the only non-Indo-European tongue in Western Europe.

When I heard it, though, it wasn't in the context of separatist rebellion (Basque was repressed under the fascist regime that ruled Spain into my lifetime). It was on the radio, a song (or rap) I recognized as "Fight For Your Right (To Party)." I knew it wasn't the Beastie Boys; was it Spanish? No; the rap to which our hosts' baby was happily bopping along was in Basque! This child will grow up, effortlessly, trilingual. Her books won't be burned. How lucky she is.

Bilbo, as the Basques call Bilbao, is the main city of this region, but we immediately left it to go over the misty mountains. There, we found Bakio, not a tourist town but a place where Spanish families rent holiday apartments. A young girl walked a burro towards a pop-up carnival. When I saw "Freedom for the Basque Country" graffitied on a wall, it took a second for me to register it was in English.

Because this was a vacation spot, at the climax of summer vacation, the people around me were relaxed. I can't know therefore if what I observed is true culturally, or just the behavior of Spaniards on vacation. But I loved being on a Spanish beach, or later, on the patio of a restaurant, with people all dressed in costume for the Bakio fiesta. Parents, grandparents, and children could everywhere be found together. Children ran freely; someone would always look out for them. I think I saw one person under 21 on her phone. People were outdoors, relaxing in an old-fashioned way, and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

North Americans know that Europeans behave differently on beaches. I've heard much mockery of the "pickle pouch" that European men supposedly wear for swim trunks (I hardly saw any of these, but nor did I see the cargo pants that pass for shorts with some N. American men). Here on Bakio beach, people were at ease with their bodies. Let me see if I can get this alien concept across:

If your kids want to run around naked, they just do. If a woman wants to take her top off, go for it. If she doesn't, fine. Bikinis are ubiquitous, no matter what the woman's shape. The feeling of freedom is hard to exaggerate. I knew, whether I took my top off or not, no one gave a damn, and that's what's so wonderful about it. There might be some woman in Anglo-American culture who feels good about her own body, but I get the impression that if you're not wanting to lose 10 pounds, you're a traitor to your sex.

As for the children...there is no zone of personal space. Unless and until they physically crash into you, you are fair game. We inadvertently ended up near the goal of a soccer game, played by boys aged 4, 4, 6, 7, and 7. I learned their ages because that's the level of Spanish I understand. Sesame Street again. The kids played for hours, and one 4-year-old in particular crashed horizontally on nearly every play, but he never tired. Throughout our visit I never saw a fat kid, either. Can't imagine why.

Besides swimming in the Bay of Biscay, we managed a couple of activities away from the beach. San Juan de Gaztelugatxe is a 10th-century hermitage built out over the sea. The monks must have carried stones to build it all the way up what now purports to be 1,000 steps (I looked it up; there are 241). It is still a pretty challenging hike without stones. The views, though, of the bay and back over to the beach, are gorgeous.

It began to rain on our last afternoon, but not before we had a chance to check out the paella festival just up the road. Fifty-three groups had gathered to cook paellas for their families and friends; then the paellas were judged. T. talked our way into a taste of the 17th-place winner, proudly prepared by teenaged girls. One of them, who spoke with us in fluent English, had spent her junior year of high school in Indiana. There was singing and dancing, accordion and tambourine. Other than homemade paella our main source of food was tapas (Basque pintxos) from a bar...eaten at a much more leisurely hour than mealtimes at home.

The evening of the fiesta was inexplicably centered on an Athletic Bilbao float (the local soccer team) featuring Jesus holding a stuffed lion. A group of people dressed as police officers sang loudly around it. At least I hope they weren't the real cops, as the most popular costume elsewhere seemed to be robbers. Whole families were dressed in silent-film-era robber costumes, holding bags with dollar signs. Someone dressed as a sheikh slugged a beer. From beginning to end of the weekend, kids as young as seven were setting off firecrackers, with seemingly no regard for safety. It was un-British chaos!

Before heading for the airport we had a couple hours in Bilbao. It was raining, so we just looked around the Guggenheim museum, which has put Bilbao on the visitors' map. The building, designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry, is arguably the main attraction; there were temporary exhibits on Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The latter was put on by the Art Gallery of Ontario. It felt like stepping back to my previous life on McCaul Street.

This was, incredibly, only my second visit to Spain and my first to the mainland. I loved Mallorca, but there I was surrounded by German and English tourists, and didn't hear much Spanish (or Mallorquin). This time I felt like I'd really traveled to a different country, not just a different climate. I definitely want to return to Spain.

Of Muppets and migration

I don't know if Americans can hear it over the immigration rhetoric in the U.S., but there is something pretty disturbing going on in Europe. It's being described as the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

That's a hell of a comparison, and I use hell advisedly. There have been hundreds of gruesome deaths: men, women, and children trapped in trucks; bodies fished from the sea. But I don't want to write about that, as if appealing to Westerners' humanity is enough to make us want "migrants" moving in next door. Because come on, most of us don't. Philosophically and even personally we may be pro-immigration--I certainly am--but that doesn't mean we have an answer for the desperate crowds trying to get through the Channel Tunnel or the Budapest train station. I don't know where to put those people, and even if I did, I don't know the logistics of actually settling them, let alone where Europeans would find the political will.

One thing I do know: These people have to go somewhere. We don't feel the urgency of World War II at present, but let's remember that all those people on the move in the 1930s and '40s had to either go somewhere, or die. There wasn't a humane, "send them back" solution, and there isn't now. Syria, for one, is a land of destruction; I don't need to go into who all contributed to making it a hellhole, it just is.

Some Westerners do sense that there is no way to send people back. They say--tongue in cheek I hope--sink the boats, or just bomb the whole Middle East. I understand the despair that leads to such statements. There is no obvious place to put people, and yet they keep coming. Are they fleeing for their lives, or are they economic migrants, "just" looking for a better life for themselves and their children?

In many cases, both. And here is the hard, cold, economic fact that Westerners and especially Europeans have to face. Whoever the migrants are, and however we manage them, there is no future without immigration.

European countries, without exception, have aging and declining populations. Some of the countries you would least expect this of, such as Italy, are in fact the most aging and declining. At the same time, all these countries have racked up unsustainable debts that future generations are going to be stuck with. Older workers are expecting to retire on a shrinking tax base. Without younger workers who pay taxes, every economy in Europe is unsustainable. Where are we going to get those people?

The United States, unlike Europe, can look forward to a growing economy sustained by continuing numbers of young workers who pay taxes and contribute to paying the national debts. But the only reason for that is immigration--specifically, Latin American immigrants and their children born in the U.S.A. This doesn't tell us, of course, how immigration should be managed, what the laws should be or how they should be enforced. But it's a demographic fact. The future of the U.S. is an immigrant future. (And the past is an immigrant past, but I'm not appealing to that here.)

Europeans, by and large anti-immigrant, point out that the U.S. and Canada are huge countries with a long history of integrating immigrants. Canada, which certainly can only grow and thrive with continuous immigration, is by and large successful; you hear relatively little immigrant-bashing or the idea that such people can never be Canadian. (With the Syrian refugees, Canada, like other countries, has tragically failed.) But Europeans say it's different here. Small, crowded, not used to it, Muslims...

All good points but there is no alternative. There is no future in which the population continues to be overwhelmingly white and monolingual (English or whatever the native language of the country is). It's just not demographically sustainable.

Do I know where to put the hated "migrants" in European countries? No. I don't have an answer for the U.S. either, but I do know the future is brown and multilingual. There is no other way to sustain our populations, our economies and tax base. You don't have to be a multiculturalist or a bleeding-heart liberal to understand this. It's business sense.

Certainly, the British approach of taking in asylum seekers but then forbidding them to work is not a good approach. Forced idleness is profoundly bad even for someone with far more resources than these people have. I remember my months of no work permit in the U.K. as some of the most depressing of my life; I hated it here and felt anything but part of the country I was living in. But a person enterprising enough to leave everything behind and risk his life is likely to work hard if given a chance.

In country after country, immigrants in general pay more in taxes than they use in services, contribute to the economy more (for example, by starting more new businesses) and commit fewer crimes than native-born people do. A system that hands out benefits to idle people is not sustainable, whether those people are migrants or not. But a system that finds a way to integrate new residents and take advantage of their hard work is the future--if Europe is not to decline.

It's this no alternative that, I think, most galls a significant proportion of the population, not only in Europe but in the U.S. The future I paint is basically what those of us who grew up watching Sesame Street learned to expect. Some of the presidential candidate rhetoric makes me think there are two types of Americans: the Sesame Street and the anti-Ses.

My generation was the first to grow up believing that women could do anything (our mothers' generation made it possible). We also learned that Spanish speaking was a normal part of American life, and now we know that a man of color can be President of the United States. All this drives the anti-Ses crowd crazy. They cannot stand a multicolored, multilingual future for America, and they think Barack Obama is somehow causing it. On the contrary, he can't stop it, and neither can they.

We know that not nearly enough refugees were taken in the 1930s and '40s, because we know what happened to those left behind. Many of those who fled, such as European Jews, made massive contributions to their adopted country. What seemed at the time like just a crisis turned out to be an opportunity. I know--sounds like something an American would say! At least, the America I grew up in.

Sesame Street was not the actual world of the 1970s, but it became real because my generation of kids grew up believing it was possible. Now it has moved from the possible to the necessary. This is the future of the United States. If Europeans are wise, they'll embrace it also.

Book review: Those Bones Are Not My Child

“Lady, Black boys getting killed in the South just ain’t news.”
“And girls,” she inserted. “And women and men.”
“I know how you feel, but I don’t make network policy. The news of the moment is Iran, when it’s not the election or stories about international terrorism.” 

Sounds like it could be this morning’s news. But it’s 1980 in Atlanta, and more than forty black children have in fact been murdered, in a pattern that can be traced around “the city too busy to hate.” This novel, Toni Cade Bambara’s masterwork, follows an estranged mother and father whose son goes missing just as the killings are finally becoming news.

I was a child in 1980, about the same age as Zala and Spence’s younger son. I was daily reminded of the U.S. hostages held in Iran, but I had no idea that in the next state, the deadly backdrop to this book was unfolding. Atlanta was supposed to be the Black Mecca of the New South, progressive and free. It had a black mayor and new black police officers; one of them, Sergeant B. J. Greaves, is a character in the novel. I never saw a black police officer the whole time I was growing up—or a woman—but I knew such things were possible, because they were characters in books.

It was in reading those same books at school that I first came across fiction by Toni Cade Bambara. “Raymond’s Run” is one of those unforgettable stories that has stayed with me since childhood. So to discover this big novel, published after her death in 1995, is a real pleasure.

A pleasure, despite the horror that is at the heart of the story. For Bambara’s writing is so beautiful, illuminating the most everyday details of a family’s life, which will never be everyday again. She is in absolute command of her characters’ perspective, the viewpoints of both parents, the younger son and daughter. Through their increasingly desperate efforts to find out what happened to Sonny and the other children, Bambara shows us a city in the round. The upwardly mobile Atlantans, the Vietnam vets like Spence, elderly black residents who have seen it all. Whatever their class or background, none of these characters are victims, except in the true sense of being victims of crime. They never whine. They have confidence and pride.

Because of the richness of detail with which she writes, Bambara does the best thing I think a novelist can do: she takes the reader into another world. I see the banana magnet on the car ashtray, the kids at the boys’ club, the African-identified activists in the park. I am back in the time, though not the place, of my childhood, its phones, furniture, school buildings. The horror of what is happening to the children is more real, not because Bambara writes violence (which is never gratuitous) but because she places it in the ordinary world, the one we live in.

Bambara was an important figure in both feminism and African-American studies, as well as an accomplished filmmaker. All of this comes through in a highly cinematic novel. We learn a lot as readers, but she is never preachy. Instead, she sets the story in the context of other events of the time: the Harvey Milk assassinations, the Jim Jones massacre, David Duke and Jesse Helms, the struggle of Black Britons and South Africans. The mystery grows so big that the main characters almost feel lost, as they surely must have in real life—yet Bambara regains the thread of their story just when we’ve given it up for lost.

From beyond the grave, Bambara tells a human story, at a time when we cannot be reminded too often that “Black Lives Matter.” To all of us, because we are part of each other, and part of the same world. Last week* many RedState activists were calling a broadcaster who challenged Donald Trump a whore and a lesbian, and the man in the White House a “nigger.” I only wish the country of this novel felt more distant than it does.

*http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21661010-when-republicans-ditch-donald-trump-they-will-also-have-confront-his-supporters-anger