A City of Scars. And Hope. Detroit, MI

The man was standing in the doorway of our hotel restaurant. Inside. The restaurant had two entrances - one from the street, where the hostess was; one from the hotel lobby, where the restaurant’s bar was the first thing you saw. We entered from the lobby and this man was standing, backpack on shoulder, shorts, and a Detroit Tigers - orange T-shirt on, and stopped us with a head tilt: “Hey! Help a guy out, sir!” - he said to my husband - “Help a guy out!”. We kept walking, and I felt some remorse, truthfully. It was Sunday. I should have given him something. Or at least offered to pay for a meal. As we were sitting down and several minutes after that, after ordering, I could not clear this man out of my head. I was thinking, “I should give him something. I’ll buy a meal for him right here at the restaurant. I need to ...”. But before I could voice what my plan was going to be to help him out, our waitress came back to our table. She had taken our order, she had brought us our coffee, we hardly had time to sip our first sip, why was she back? She leaned over to our table and in a whisper she said: “There was a guy at the back door, at the bar. He watched when the bartender went to the bathroom, then snuck behind the bar and stole her purse. The police were in the lobby and caught him, so he didn’t make it very far. They took him away, there was no violence, but just wanted to alert you to be careful.” This is when I felt a mix of sad, guilty, and scared ... But not angry. Just sad, guilty, and scared. Then, I said to myself: “Boy, I guess Detroit does live up to its name nowadays.” We were downtown Detroit, in a somewhat high-priced hotel, at 10AM on a Sunday. I have traveled a bit and I had never stayed in a hotel where we had a pair of city police officers at our hotel’s reception virtually 24 hours a day, every day. Virtually everyone I know that heard that I was going to Detroit follows it with “Wow! Be careful! Lots of crime there.” Or “Detroit? Why?” As some of you who have been following my blog for years know too well - there is no such question for me as “why are you visiting a place?” Any place. Every place in the world, every rock has a meaning and a story to tell - and that is why enough for me.

Detroit skyline as seen from Belle Isle across the Detroit River. That Ambassador bridge that connects America and Canada (faint, on the horizon) was giving me nightmares. It's famous for not being marked clearly enough and people cross it by mistake. I was worried they won't allow us back! 

But Detroit will not stay with me as a crime city. Not in the least. Detroit was not a city of crime, but of dreams. Dreams come true - maybe a long time ago. But also dreams that have been broken. A city that built America. Just as much as New York City or Los Angeles.

Our hotel's lobby - The David Whitney, a former shopping mall and office building

In its most profound way, Detroit felt like a gorgeous, rich city, with more history than I could absorb that no one loves anymore, if they ever did. Like a neglected child still beautiful but savage, or a neglected garden - still beautiful but leggy and unyielding ... Like an aged person who shows all the scars of their life, wrinkles, growths and all, Detroit shows its age and its character. No different than any other historic city, as history goes, for America which is not much longer than a family album. There is a passion and an intense-ness about a heavily industrial city. I was born and raised in a university town, with a very small industrial district. But when I wandered off in the “industrial zone”, the pulse of progress, of a life driven forward, as opposed to stagnation, felt real. Felt alive. Felt strong. In the streets of Detroit - you feel that - you feel what it must have been like 100 years ago, when plants were hopping and people came from rural America to work on the assembly line, as Johnny Cash tells us. Detroit once put America on the map of the world! And to some extent, you still feel that - in the streets, in the history, in the architecture, and stories. The architecture alone rivals that of Chicago and New Work City. The streets are wide and lined with as many styles of construction as there are books on architecture. The materials are diverse and for the most part durable. But the vicious winters, the lake-effect weather, the winds, the many years of neglect have left deep scars on every brick and every marble panel. Detroit used to house about 1.8 million people back in its industrial heyday. Today, it barely has a bit over 600.000. Our culture has vastly changed and our lifestyle shifted, here in America: back in the day, people worked and lived in the city. Despite being the birthplace of the American automobile industry, a legacy that gifted it with the nickname of Mo(tor)town City, having a car was a luxury. People could not afford to ride to work and in cold, long winters, they preferred to live close to where they worked. Things have changed. Now, everyone rides. Everyone drives. People moved outside the city, in the suburbs, and some jobs remained in the city, while others, the industrial ones, got shipped, mostly overseas. This gutted the industrial Midwest, and Detroit was probably its heartbeat. You can imagine the emptiness that a city built for 1.8 people to live and work in leaves when it cuts that population to a third! Detroit just about feels like it’s populated in about a third of its spaces ... The empty two thirds echo with ghosts and memories ... The rest of the buildings are prey to decay and rot. Unfortunately - and I mean this with all my heart. You can see the uniqueness in the craftsmanship and the inspiration of every architect that ever designed for this city - much like Chicago, but in its own style and vibe. Although Detroit comes across as a big American city (sky rises, aerial tram and interchanges, urban feel), it has the noise and crowds of a small town. It’s sleepy and quiet. Hardly anyone walking around or even driving around. We had the least amount of traffic in any big city we have ever been in, for sure.

The eerie empty streets: the streets in Detroit were the emptiest in any big American city I have ever seen. 

People are amazing! We never encountered a rude, vulgar, or snappy person during our stay. They are polite, smiling, patient, calm, incredibly kind and welcoming. We asked one of our restaurant waitresses if we could bring our drinks from the bar across the lobby into the restaurant so we could have their dessert - something that I am pretty sure was not allowed, since the restaurant had their own bar and was more than willing to make a sale on their own beverages. She made up an answer: “Sure! Why not?” I asked her, “Is this legal?” She said with a smile and a shrug: “Well, if it’s not, no one told me, so I say it is legal. Come along.”

Just like there is such a thing as "Southern hospitality", there is also such a thing as "Midwestern down-to-earth-ness." A friend of mine (from Ohio, oh my!) spoke to me in my earlier years of living in America about Midwestern values - blue collar, hard work, honesty, trust. You feel these in every interaction with people here, too.

As wonderful as the renowned Henry Ford museum is (and its outdoors counterpart, the Greenfield Village; and yes, you can really see the actual car that JKF got shot in as well as the chair that Lincoln got shot it in the Ford theater in DC), the Detroit Institute of Arts was really my absolute favorite! As much as this Beaux-Arts-style building impresses through its own style, it impresses more through the top-notch exhibits that it houses. Entire houses and churches ensconced within its walls, original paintings by Monet, Van Gogh and monumental, large-scale industrial murals by Diego Rivera overwhelm you. We spent about three hours there but I don’t think we saw half of it. Not in depth for sure. I could have spent a day. The only other museum that impressed me more was The Met in New York - and we didn’t finish that one in one day, either.

The industrial Diego Rivera murals at the DIA

There is always hope, and there is always life when there is art. And the DIA in the heart of Detroit gives me that hope.

The Detroit Institute of Art

Just like I failed to eat a slice of the famous Chicago pizza last year, I failed to visit the Motown Museum this year in Detroit. Another local landmark not met. This was on my bucket list, as they say, but we got there too late and the tickets were sold out. Cannot tell you what a sigh of disappointment I unleashed! And that was the last day in the city - so, no do-over - the next morning very early, our plane would take us back home.

The Motown museum - here, in this house, some of the most consequential American music was born and launched. It is a non-descript single-family home in a row of historic houses, but it pulsed with life for me! 

Ah well, we always need reasons to go back, right?! I have a friend who was born in Detroit. When I met him, in 2000, and asked him where he was from, he reluctantly said “well, I was born and raised in Detroit.” He was quick to follow with: “But none of my family lives there anymore.” - like it was some kind of sin to admit this. He went on: ”I feel about Detroit, just like you feel about Romania: I am from there. But I have no desire to go back.” I felt a lot like I used to feel about Romania on this trip: a place that was beautiful, with hidden gem-like history pieces, but a place that its own locals didn’t know how to sell and brag about. I no longer feel like Romanians do much of that anymore - Romania has, finally, earned its well-deserved place on the map of Europe and the Romanians I know are proud of it. I hope that Detroit achieves that too. One day, soon!

Ford rules the city! And I felt like it always will. 

Old single homes were beautiful, all over the city. 

View from our historic hotel's room, with the aerial tram (which was incredibly quiet) to the right. 

This gutted building looked quite the opposite of what the billboard promised 

The gorgeous, Art-Deco Music Hall building

 

Classic old Detroit - the good and the bad, and the beautiful ... 

Another shot of the aerial tram tracks and an old building downtown right by hour hotel

A picture of the "new" Detroit

We'd never miss an opportunity to see a Frank Lloyd Wright house - the Smith House in Bloomfield Township, MI, outside of Detroit

A Touch-Base Blog. A Ramble.

What a big pot of steaming, vitriolic poo this year has been in so many ways! The garbage and vileness, the debasement, the gore seems to gurgle up infinitely from everywhere. If you’ve ever been to Yellowstone or in any other part of the earth where hot, steaming, gurgling poisonous materials come to the surface of the earth, in a stench you can barely take, hot and lethal - you’ll get the very picture of what our world is like today... 

I don’t even think it has to do with one country or another. Sure, there are better and worse places you can be in - but as a whole, even the so-called “good people”, the people on the “right side of history” - even those ... have their blame and their contribution to the current state of the world ... 

There are people literally fighting with their bare chests for their freedom and their lives - and those are the people who are put down and made fun of. The other people, no, not just the aggressors, but the other people, sitting on the sidelines are judging and pointing and laughing and masquerading as political gurus and protectors of freedom. But they are all but actionless. ... Sickness to my stomach sometimes ... 

The world has not yet learned that demonizing the opposition does only one thing: burns the fire under their feet hotter and makes their revenge that much more gruesome. No, I am not saying we should sleep with the enemy, as it were, but we should dang-well make a better effort to understand how they have come so far as to rule the order of things. We should shut up for a minute and listen. And learn. 

It’s a game (their game)  that we (the “good” people) know nothing about. A new game with new rules. But blinded by our rage we fail to learn what the rules are. Cutting our nose to spite our face in the process ... 

Because of where and how I grew up, I know that humans against the system rarely renders humans the victors. Most often than not, the system wins, albeit for only a period of time. I still hope for heroes and wish that people would actually honor their oath. Because so many of them aren’t, right now. But life is seldom fair, and this time is one of those times where fairness has become in dire short supply. 

I decided that I am too small and too powerless to make a significant difference in turning the world on its head to make it “normal” again. I decided a long time ago that I am not of the heroic or patriotic persuasion. I know this of myself and I don’t see it as a failing. 

So, if your people didn’t win, and if you’re a little person with no power to make a difference, your only weapon is to conserve your energy and try to stay sane. You at least owe it to yourself to survive, however you can. To survive and help your kin survive too. 

So, I do what the communists taught us to do: stay low, for a lowered head is rarely severed, and try to protect your own identity. Only staying whole and true to yourself will you weather the storms. This is my full-time focus instead, because this is the only thing I can control. I try to be kind to myself and mine, and to whoever comes in contact with me. I am scared and bloody-knuckled at the end of every day, but I try to build a survival kit for us, too. It’s all I can do to stay sane or preserve some semblance of sanity. I am grabbing tight to those sharp, stoney shores while the torrents are trying to rip my arms off and carry me away ...   

But this does not want to be a political blog. This is just a  “touch-base” blog on our lives, for those who normally keep up with those things ... 

It’s been a busy year for us already, which is amazing given that half of the world would tell you that two middle-aged childless people have absolutely nothing to show for themselves ... Well, anyone can walk a half mile in any of our shoes and they’ll want their lives back, I am sure of it ... It’s perfectly OK. I would not want anyone’s life, either. 

Despite the crazy world stage and the fear of traveling anywhere, despite the fear of maybe never seeing our families abroad or of never seeing them alive or the fear of never coming back home if we venture outside the borders ... life still goes on, as it must. We find things that keep us going and keep us engaged and attentive. 

It’s been a hard year on every level - material, historical, familial, professional, global, emotional - but it’s also been a good year, too ... The blessings are many. I am still not sure if this blog will get posted, or  erased, or would render me in jail, but for now, I am going to post it. To do that - that is a gift. I am not sure if it’ll last, but when are we ever in the business of believing that anything is forever? 

We have learned to be more focused, live more in the moment, and we have learned to help more if and where and how we can. I help my family, my family’s friends, and I keep people who matter close to me. I can only hope they, too, can keep their inner circles close and healthy and so, one circle at a time, we could all become a more empathetic and healthier, and stronger, and less poisonous community. 

There are so many god-awful things in this world of ours that we have no way of changing. None. No power. No means. No reach. But what we can do, we should do. And little by little, the interconnectedness of us all will amount to something better. It must. Do two rights make a wrong? I ponder ... If there is any hope left in the world, maybe not. And there is always hope, we are told. 

We are moved by the belief that what we are witnessing is not new. It’s just humans being human. And they’ve always done this. In some shape or form and intensity, this is the human world in action. It’s just more prominent now as it seems particularly more “everywhere”. It’s not just one country or one group of people - it is everyone. And with the amazing communication we have nowadays (thanks, technology!), it’s in our faces a lot more often than ever before - and being visual is what makes it more gruesome, more real. More “there”. 

I am trying so hard to establish a healthier routine for consuming the news. I try (it is so hard, I won’t lie because my brain’s been re-path-ed already and I am old - so re-learning is not easy) to re-train myself on what to do with my time - not to pick up the phone and start scrolling.

I read three sources or so (four if you count a Romanian one) of news. Because I do want to keep up with the news to see how our lives are changing with the world (faster than ever, and not for the good, I would say). But I try to avoid social media as much as I can - because I am poisoned by everyone’s bias and opinion about the news ... I want the facts alone and I want my brain bandwidth to make up its own bias. 

I avoid Facebook but I am still there every day. I find that Instagram is a lot less poisonous. And I love pictures. So that helps. I absolutely hate memes (yes, “hate” is the right word) because some people stop there with their education. This is unfortunate and does no one any service. 

I try to write more and read more, and more consequential stuff. I subscribe to things that keep my focus captive for longer, more complex thought. Yes, it takes longer but my brain feels so much better and I feel a lot less hateful at the end of the day. 

We go to museums and book launches. We go to concerts and speaking engagements and learn. Kids, I am here to tell you that you will never in fact stop learning. And you should never even consider it. When you do consider it, consider your life over, too. 

We take weekend trips and long walks. It’s an old, rusty, moldy, decrepit cliche that nature nurtures the soul. But truly: there is something restorative in a walk in nature. We take advantage of the freedoms we do have for now - and we believe that there are no guarantees for tomorrow. We recharge to be ready, physically, emotionally, mentally, for what might come ... 

We’re planning for a long and once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and we pray that our years-long plans for this won’t be foiled. But, again ... there are no guarantees. We lead with hope and try to have patience. And still, even in this rotten world, where a big, steaming turd seems to be handed to us every day, we look forward to the good plans we work so hard to keep together. 

I am so incredibly grateful for my family who keeps us sane. We talk, we cry, we laugh, we despair together. And we take time to celebrate the wins! The health, the peaceful days around us, the beauty of our shared children, the beauty and strangeness of the seasons. We take lots of pictures - of good and bad. We want to hold on to the moments we do have, so we document. One day, they might serve as history to someone. 

We are our loudest cheerleaders and that’s OK. As people are more and more self-absorbed and guarded, or reprehensibly vitriolic, we shelter within our own selves, like snails. Waiting for the storms to pass. They might not stop during our lifetime, but we hope to be deep inside, taking care of our own and still breathing. We hope. 

Cardinals have visited us way too often lately. They usually tell me that something bad will happen but that in the end it will all be OK. So, as we all sit on this powder keg of a world, we heed the advice of the cardinals and we wait. 

There is this belief inside me that moves me every day which is made up of some simple truths that give me energy and reason to wake up in the morning.

They go like this: 

What we are witnessing is not new; we are stronger than we think, if only we’d shut up and listen to ourselves; we are deeply human, and deeply flawed - we will never win or lose the war in one battle; there is work to be done; start with the person next to you and do well by them, even when that person is yourself; smile to rejuvenate the brain; it will help you when it’s at peace, and not when it’s at war with itself; think before you do; drink coffee; smell the air after the rain, or even after a forest fire. See the difference. 

These are some of the simple, unarguable truths that move me every day. And yes, I still stray and I get lost - or else I would not be human. But I try to be back at it the next day. And I hold the candle of hope that it will all end well. One day, hopefully with me as a witness ... 

Our guardians, our hope ...

Birthday Blues

I am 47 today.

In the words of Anne Lamott, born tomorrow, an Aries who has been put on this planet just to remind me who I want to be when I finally grow up, “God, what a world. What a heartbreaking, terrifying freak show.”

I open the news every morning and I cringe, I shrivell in a little tiny ball, ready to crawl back into bed and not ever open my eyes again. There are people torn apart  by bombs, ethnical cleansing in Africa and Asia, and who knows where else. I had coworkers who grew up in Venezuela and told me stories about putting mattresses in the windows to shelter them from bullets. I read about women raped and submitted into bondage every second of every day, by the hundreds and thousands. A new book that just came out proclaims that we’re raising now “The Trayvon Martin generation: a generation of kids who face death every day. Kids who know about death before they start living.” How do you start your day and keep finding purpose with this?! 

We have white supremacy and terrorism at home. Forget fighting terror against America. Whatever happened to fighting terror right here, at home. Terror from our next door neighbor, our kids, our teachers. We have people smacking flight attendants for doing their jobs. We have kids hitting teachers in school with little more of a consequence than a slap on the wrist or a shrug. We have world leaders primitively and cruelly fighting just like we’re in the Middle Ages right in the middle of Europe. William Wallace of Scotland would be amazed how little we've come since his time. We have NATO and the EU, we have UNESCO and UNICEF and the UN; and we also have Putin. 

I have three friends fighting breast and head cancers. My own mother has been battling cancer for five years and she’s going and going and going - with what energy, I do not know. 

I have friends who sleep in high-rise basements and metro stations in Ukraine to shelter from the constant bombings, because they could not escape the country - no one wanted to allow them to stay with two dogs. I have friends who have loved ones in Ukraine who might be  stuck there - because they put off leaving thinking they’re enough away from the capital and they'd be safe; now they might not be able to escape because there are no roads left. Because they are not safe, even far away from the capital. 

I have coworkers in Armenia who are sheltering Russians running away from oppression. In our daily meetings we start with things that they need to be able to put these people up - things like pillows and blankets. They talk about the hatred the Russians see abroad, the way they can’t use their credit cards and how they cannot get jobs because no one hires Russians in Europe, at large, or in the former Soviet republics. Everyone forgets that they ran away from the same things we're sanctioning their leaders for.

A friend’s mom, from work, went to the hospital to treat a foot infection with a small surgery. She died of cancer (which she didn’t know she had) three weeks later. My family members, my loved ones are coming out of Covid and we don’t know quite yet what this means in the long run for them. I have friends from work who are battling long Covid and some who have 30 year olds in their families on dialysis for life because of long Covid. 30! And the CDC tells us we can unmask, the numbers look better. 

We have no current vaccine that fights the current variants. We have no treatment for Covid. Much of the world is not boosted yet. Some have never been vaccinated. They said in the news that the continent of Africa will not be all vaccinated till 2028! 2028, people! But Covid is over. Unmask! Unmask on planes! Half of the US Congress seems sick with it right now, but unmask away, I guess. They are 30! With 3 little kids under the age of 10. They were the only income earner in the house but now they are on dialysis and in need of a kidney all because of this stupid, unfair, unrelentless, smart virus we’re (still!) dealing with. (Sorry, not sorry, CDC!)

I adopted an older cat with a history. I wanted to do some good. I wanted to give someone who is hopeless some hope. It turns out she is sick. She will be forever sick and need constant care and medication just to survive. 

My husband went to the doctor the other day with a toothache. He came home after a “small surgery”. When is this pain going to stop? The cutting? The bleeding and all ... This world is breaking my heart. Chipping away at it every second. 

I woke up this morning, on my birthday, to go to a memorial for a dear colleague, another plucky Aries woman who made a difference in the world of journalism who I was lucky to work with a decade ago. Another one of those that came into this world to show me who I want to be when I grow up. We talked about death and God and how peaceful death is. And mostly we talked about life. Her life and what she left behind for others. It woke me up. It was truly the perfect birthday present, considering this world today and the crass awareness we all live in. 

I wake up every day and read the news and honestly, I am not sure where to start walking. I have hope that Elon Musk will find some ways for us to live on other planets, because I don’t think there is a safe place here. (Yes, I am only half joking here). I have two citizenships and I want neither one, truly. The human condition is no longer a safe place. 

Yeah, the world around me is pretty grim right now ... and has been for a while ... 

And yet, today, on my birthday, I feel very strongly that I made out like a bandit in this life. 

I am sheltered and there are no bombs flying over my head. For now, although close, there are no bombs flying over my family’s heads in Europe, either. I have had the good fortune to choose who I married. Twice. I have had the good fortune and blessing to be able to get a divorce and leave an abusive marriage. To make that choice, when millions of women can’t. How lucky is that? I am reading a memoir by Madeleine Albright right now. One of her daughters is an international lawyer whose one of her first customers was a grandmother of 26 years of age. Just let that sink in for a minute. A grandmother. At 26. 

I have been able to get an education. As a woman, I have been able to choose where I went to school and do something I loved. I can read. I can write and I can speak two languages. I can write this blog and I am not scared they will lock me up. I just want to cry with joy for all this! 

I have been able to travel on four continents and learn from other cultures how to look at this life through the kaleidoscope of possibilities and not just through one lens. How lucky is that, you tell me?! 

I live every day with so much love and understanding, so much respect and peace at home that it makes me choke up. I am so blessed and so lucky I feel grossly guilty! 

I have a hearth full of birthday cards staring back at me now. And my cat just sat down, leaning painfully into me with a sigh. Best present I can think of yet.

I have managed to see 47 years of age when everyone has been telling me for 39 of them that I will never make it past 25, and after I made it to 26, that I'd never make it much longer ... There is a blessing bestowed on me that keeps showering  me with bliss.

The reason I am not crawling back in bed after reading news or emails or Facebook posts every morning is because we're supposed to stay in the pain. We're supposed to go through hell, and let it hurt us, and let it change us. This is how we change, and how we grow, and how we learn, and how we get to come out on the other end stronger, and more complete, and maybe, just maybe, even better.

I am 47 and feel like going on 90. I swapped my reading glasses all around the house today (I went from 2.00 to 2.75 in a hurry!), I feel old and slow, but I am still here - and old or not, I am still living my life and trying to keep fulfilling the purpose I was put on this planet for. I hope I know what that is. But like I found from my friend’s memorial today, they might realize what it was when I am gone. And that would be OK. As long as that purpose is fulfilled. 

Also in the words of Anne Lamott: “I have warm socks and feet to put in them”. Today, in this cold, unfriendly, deserted day, the 9th day of April, and the 99th day of the year 2022, I am infinitely grateful for this! 

We drove past a billboard today that read “Hope is not canceled”, and I felt a twinkle in my eye. Hope is never canceled. I’ll live to that thought! 

Where Are We Now? After 20 Years.

Random thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks ... 

20 years ago today I was in my parents’ kitchen in Romania, watching with stopped breath and open mouth the horrors of the 9-11 attacks. I lived in the US at the time but I was on vacation for two weeks, visiting my family in Romania. I had climbed to the top of one of the Towers less than two years earlier and when I saw that plane hit it all I could think about was how massive a number of people that meant would be dead! You knew when you saw those sky-scrapers how many thousands of people it housed. I could not imagine what would happen to them now. When the buildings collapsed, the unknown faces of those thousands of people kept playing in front of my eyes like a morbid slideshow. Unstoppable. Horrific.

Another thing hit close to home for me: when I watched the towers collapse, the anchors repeated the names of the flights that had been hijacked and they kept saying that the flights had taken off from the  Dulles airport in DC. I realized that that was the airport where my flight to Europe had taken off only days earlier. I had chills down my spine: I was in the same airport as those terrorists! Oh, God! Could that have been me on those planes? Everyone who has ever flown could have related to that fear but especially those, like me, who were in-between planes at that time, knowing full-well, they’d have to brave another flight to make it home.

Lots of people died that day – at The Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania, too, but for some reason the collapse of those two towers is what stopped the hearts and the breathing of an entire planet! As you watched the images on TV  of people jumping out of the windows of The Twin Towers towards their sure death, repeatedly, ad nauseam, you could feel how every soul of the world was looking for someone else’s hand to clutch, for someone, anyone, to hug, to ensure they are not alone and not abandoned in that vacuum of sheer pain. You could feel that everyone who had any heart left felt the same horror and the same grief, and the same anger as you felt. This was the togetherness people are talking about now, that we should be awaken to … the togetherness that we all need, as humans, as compassionate beings when times get tough.

I remember as if it were yesterday my first two thoughts after watching the events unfold: first, I was thinking that the US will never allow me to get back to my home which at the time was Greensboro, NC. I was not a citizen yet. I had gotten my temporary Green Card just the year before, so I was for sure not going to be allowed in the country – the announcements that the US does not allow anyone but citizens to return to the US was made by many  US Embassies in many countries including in Romania  almost immediately after the attacks. I remember this scared me terribly as moving to America was my life-long dream. My husband was in the US and my new life, the way I had built it. My hopes for the future were all here, in the US. I was terrified this one act of terrorism would kill my future for me, my life-long work and would ground me in Romania.

The second thought was “oh, man, America will first get together and pray after this. That’s what they do: they first, pray. But man, after that, they will be pissed! They will crush whoever did this. I feel sorry for them.” We did not know right from the beginning who had done this. I was sure, though, this was another country, another power, not the US. I knew a war would be coming but never in my worst dreams did I think that war would span for the next 20 years! I knew whatever war was coming would be brutal, given the 20^th century’s advancement in arms, and I feared what that’ll do to the world and to each of us, individually. I was wondering if we would be able to travel freely anymore, if I would be able to come back to Romania and see my family there, in the future, if America was going to wage war on … whoever did this … and involve other powers in this war as well?!

America did pray right after September 11. Country-wide vigils and charity concerts abounded. Charity to 9-11 victims sprouted everywhere. People looked up to the heroes of 9-11. Everyone swore they would never forget.

Giuliani, the Mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, became “America’s Mayor.” For all his faults, lies, and illegalities, for all of his Republicanism, my liberal friends loved him and touted his accomplishments and how he brought the city, the first responders together and what an incredibly great job he did handling the aftermath of this tragedy. How can you handle it, really?! But that, he did. After that, it seemed like we, as a people, were not divided in camps, anymore – albeit very briefly. The lines that separated us because of different political views, different tax views and views on how one should handle the economy and what it means to be patriotic faded. We were all thinking as Americans, together in one common thought: “who did this to us? They would pay dearly. Let’s hold out hands together and pray for those that we lost. Let’s be together. It hurts less when we’re holding hands.” – it looked as if we were saying …

As I was in Romania, my US friends, coworkers, and relatives flooded me with messages of “come back home, safely”, “how are you?”, “what do people say there?” (meaning in Europe, in Romania). I never felt alone. I was with one half of my family, my blood half, but my other half, the one I had chosen for myself, was hailing back, not forgetting me, from across The Pond. For all our differences, we were all one. And I am sure that what brought us together was not our true belief that all of a sudden Giuliani was  a nice guy and Bush stopped being an idiot overnight, but  that need for togetherness in front of horror, that need for holding another’s hand to cross the dark pit left in front of us by those planes going down. That simple, human, vulnerability, unaccounted for by much fanfare or glamor, but our simpleness as humans that needed to be held …

I have always believed that what sets Americans apart from many other nations is their individualism – their obsession with themselves, their lack of awareness that they are not alone in the world, that the consequence of their actions affects others. But during those days, I saw an America where people stopped for just a minute and started to be aware of their neighbor’s pain, of their neighbor’s loss, of their ability to help or be compassionate. All because it could have happened to any of us.

The US did allow me to get back – they opened the borders for US citizens and Green-Card holders alike in the following days. I remember boarding my flight from Germany at the time and military American personnel with automatic guns were supervising the boarding. They made us empty all of our carryon bags, and even questioned whether we were hiding explosives in our (film) cameras, they body-searched us (a first of many, many others to come), and questioned us for hours before they allowed everyone to board. It was terrifying and reassuring at the same time.

But it was then, in Germany, only about 10 days or so from September 11, when the American individualism showed itself again: people were frustrated and angry that they were being searched. How dare they think I’m a terrorist?! Completely missing the point! Although there were American soldiers flanking the departure gate, although a United Airlines flight (the same airline whose planes had been hijacked 10 days earlier!) was waiting at the gate, Americans were upset that they are treated as if they were terrorists. To me, this was reassuring. To everyone else, it was an infringement to their freedom, forgetting that what the military was protecting was precisely that freedom.

Ever since, I wonder: when we do say we come together in times of crisis, do we really come together, or do we say that as some sort of a slogan that just sounds well; as some sort of generic statement that we know sounds good, but which does not truly come from the heart?!

And do we really come ever together, despite all cost to us? Or do we come together when and if it’s convenient to us? When it’s not infringing on our freedom?! Is patriotism not a selfless display of altruism? A complete abandon of the “I” in favor of protecting the “many”?

20 years later today, people all over the internet are saying we need to remember how we came together then. We need to remember how, despite all of our differences, we all have a common goal – that of being free, protected, and that of ensuring we all live in peace. This is all true. But do we even really believe that we can strive for that common goal anymore?

I have felt so defeated and so alone in the past few years, the whole country growing angrier, and more violent, more inconsiderate, more careless, and more disconnected, that I really don’t see how we could ever think of the other selflessly, and purposefully taking our own person from the equation. What’s worse: I don’t think we can even acknowledge another’s merits, when we see them as different in any way than us. I feel like the first thing we do nowadays is look for differences between us and not commonalities.

Some folks are saying today that they pray that we can see again our togetherness from 20 years ago before another tragedy happens to remind us how we can be all one and be there for one another. But has that tragedy not already happened? Have the past 5 and 2 years (and before that, even!) not been anything but an ongoing tragedy, and open wound, bleeding, for all of us, and we still, don’t see one another?! More than 650,000 people died of Covid alone in the past year and a half. Add to those people who died of hate crimes in the past few years, people who died in wildfires and hurricanes, people who died from hunger and lack of medicine because of lack of healthcare, just to name a few … Those are infinitely more (possibly preventable) deaths than the ones we saw at 9-11.

When the cameras are off and the social media sleeps (does it ever?) and we’re not trying to fit in with the rest of the world by saying what everyone says (“we’re in this together”, “we’re one”, etc), when we dive deep into our heart, do we ever really feel like we did then, when we watched the towers collapse for the first time: do we feel in the dark for another hand to clutch on? For another person to be close to us so we can share the grief? Or do we stubbornly believe that “I” is enough in this mad world?

I believe we too often forget that grief hurts the same whether you’re this nationality or another, of this political belief or of another. Grief sees no color, no sex, no culture, no age, no country … Somehow, we have become blind to that.

What elevates us as humans, what we all (should) seek now more than ever is that simple, heartfelt, visceral togetherness of not being alone in the face of grief, horror, and pain. What brings us together is that first instinctual thought of “oh, God, can that be me out there?”  - that is where true compassion springs from (“Do onto others as you would have them do unto you …”): that however dark a tragedy is, it could happen to any of us. So, step with care …

Can we find that now deep, deep into our souls? Not because it sounds good or it looks good under a hashtag, but because we truly filter the tragedies of the world through our hearts and we know how it would feel if it were us?! Can we do it?! Or are we too shallow and clueless in our ivory towers to allow us to even ask these questions anymore?!

I am not trying to belittle the 9-11-2001 attacks. Saying they were horrid, unnatural, and mind-stopping is an understatement. But what I am trying to say is: we should pay attention to our every day and just re-learn to be human again, the very same way we were so painfully reminded that we are human on that dark day in history.

I hope humanity is not completely lost and I hope that one day soon we would wake it before all is lost. Because this is the only thing that might get us through the pain that is here now.

Historical Amnesia. How America Lost Its Way

What I wish that my family's 42 (and my 15) years of living in an authoritarian regime can teach America today

“ Ignorance can make us foot soldiers for unworthy causes. “ - Tara Westover, “Educated”

I was in college in Romania, studying to get my English major, when this American professor from Texas came to speak with us. One of the students asked him what is the biggest difference between Romania and America, and he said: “Well, you guys are many years behind America in many ways but you are not focusing your efforts into being more advanced than you are. Instead, you think your strength is in speaking about how glorious your past was. You always speak about your history and your past. But in America, let me tell you, the average American who walks down the street and enjoys their juicy burger at McDonald's and shoots their rockets into space doesn’t give a crap about history or how glorious or not that was.” I am sure I was not the only one in the audience who cringed a little and found his statement so cheapening coming from a representative of a nation most of us revered. Now, 20 some years later, I cringe still.

Nowadays, I cringe because I see the sad, the painful, the sometimes irreversible effects of so many years, decades of average Americans not giving a crap about their country’s and the world’s history. Americans find more interest in a cheap reality show displaying daily from the White House, from an accidental bug landing on a VP’s head on national television than spending the same amount of time and energy learning about history and worrying about where their present history is taking them. But that is another topic for another blog.

If you’re born in a small country like Romania, a country that has been the victim of many historical accidents and horrors, you are not only following history. It’s ingrained in your DNA. You breathe it, you eat it for breakfast and for every meal. It’s your duty since birth to preserve it, carry it on and ensure you won’t repeat it. It’s a requirement and an unwritten order to sheer survival.

For the first 15 years of my life, I was brought up in the worst years of Communist Romania, the dying years. For those who think Communism and Socialism are the same thing, they are not. I know, you don’t follow history, but I’ll say just this for your education: the difference between Communism and Socialism is that between China and France. It’s that between Cuba and Canada or Sweden. Not. The. Same. Thing. It was not only a Communist regime, but one of the worst authoritarian regimes in the history of the world. Communism is rarely if ever non-authoritarian. I learned to grow up guarded, with no trust in anyone who was not myself, not even in my parents and grandparents. I grew up in fear, and in lacking. We lacked food, running water (although the plumbing was there), soap , toilet paper, decency, dignity, and above all freedom. Not only freedom to read what we wanted and speak what we wanted, but freedom to think.

During that time I was coming of age and I started asking questions. I never understood how one person with just a handful of people just as evil as himself could control the millions of Romanians in the country. How a country that calls themselves “democratic” (which means “demos+kratos” = the power of the people) can become so swiftly “autocratic” (the power of one). How one person can impose such a rule of fear when the rule was crushing the very humanity and human dignity that I felt we should all have and respect in one another. I never understood, until the days of the Revolution of December 1989, why people cannot just kick this person and his handful of acolytes out and start fresh with a new era, when pretty much everyone in the street knew his regime was wrong and crushing. I had the same questions then about why Hitler, who was allegedly elected in free elections, could not be stopped by his own people before he ruined half of the world and a whole nation in particular. I could not understand how authoritarianism can be instated when most people should see it coming like a freight train.

Today’s America, the past several years, mostly, has shown me just how this can happen. Little by little, every day, every piece of news that comes across the wires shows me (and should show all of us, as a nation) how this happens. To me, it’s written on the wall in plain, simple English. Second-grade level plain English.  

This is what this blog is about. I will tell you things that have become the new normal for this country and are things that I lived only during my Communist years in Romania. I command you, American folks, to really shut the world off for a minute, shut off Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram and really, really think about these things. Decide whether you want your country to head into the direction that so many other authoritarian regimes lead many other countries in this world. Imagine you are multiplied into millions of people that want the same thing. Would you want yourself to be a victim of such a ruling? Just think. Then act. 

Like 1945 when a weakened Romania after the world war needed to fill a void with some ideal and just like the 1930’s when Germany needed a new ideal to believe in (I know, this is not as juicy as a McDonald's burger, it’s history, but bear with me), we are at crossroads in America today. We are in turmoil and we need to fill a void. But with what we’re filling it, what direction we choose from here on out will not only change what we have today, but will pen the destiny of this country, and of the world, not for years, but for generations to come. Unfortunately, in moments like these, the guy with the loudest rhetoric is not the good guy.  Maybe it’s not too late for America to choose the right way. But what I see seems far too gone. “Maybe” sounds optimistic.

I do need to add this one disclaimer: this is not, by any means, democratic (or "liberal") propaganda. I believe that some democrats have their blame in this, too. What follows is my truth, the one I have lived myself, proven by history. I am no one’s tool or messenger. I am sharing what I have seen and experienced myself and what my parents and grandparents experienced before me. And I will add that I am incredibly grateful that despite it all today, I am not afraid for my life when I write and post these thoughts on an open blog. At least not yet. 

So, here is my list of things that you and I live with today that I only lived once before, during my life in Authoritarian Communist Romania, arguably the darkest time of my life:

• Votes are a total waste and a cheap fake show of fake democracy. They can be sold, thrown into the garbage and completely disregarded. Even when intelligence shows they were stolen, those instated in power are allowed to proceed with the fake results because the one person says so. What is the point? – you might ask. The voting process is always allowed to proceed even in an authoritarian regime to keep the appearance of a democracy. But the inner workings of it all are gutted of fairness.
• There is no person higher than the one in charge in the president’s mansion, whatever you call that. No person nor law above their head.
• All foreign powers are evil and want us harm. Those who destabilize the country are foreign powers and not his own forces and personnel. Divisive propaganda to ensure absolute power is installed: “Trust us, not them” becomes the battle cry.
• Every country in the world is our enemy except those that have an authoritarian regime in power.
• The country leader puts his own family members and close friends in power positions even when everyone in the country understands that they are all grossly under- or non-qualified. Such concepts like “conflict of interest” are derided and perceived as destabilizing.
• The country leader lavishes in gold while the country lives paycheck to paycheck. Food stamps, homelessness are foreign concepts to the man in charge and he wishes to destroy any mere mention of them as a personal shame to his own regime, instead of acknowledging them as a fact and asking how he can help. He displays complete and utter lack of empathy which is poisonous for a “service” job as that of a democratic president.
• He favorizes the wealthy and the few to the detriment of the many and the poor.
• The regime dehumanizes people, whether they are innocent or proven guilty. People are  put in camps, or cages – units of sheer terror. In these camps, they break families up and sort people by sex (men separated from women) instead of trying them and following human-right principles of the law as agreed upon by all countries of the democratic world.
• The country leader demands people and the military to participate in lavish and expensive parades to celebrate himself, complete with tanks and the military to display his power, not the country’s achievements (very different concepts!).
• Intellectuals (yeah, those people we should listen to because they read history) flee the country as a last resort, seeing the helplessness of turning any of it around.
• Mediocrity and corruption is advanced: people who can be bought and not people who can apply the existing law of the land are promoted.
• The existing law of the land must change to fit his needs, and instead of letting the people (those in Congress elected by the people) change it, he changes it with the power of his one signature.
• Political discourse is dead. The only thing that exists, the only reality is the power of him and a very small group of close allies in key positions. The deviousness that only blind greed for power can muster ensures that every institution, little by little, responds to his beck-and-call.
• You’re afraid to speak your mind if that means speaking anti-him/ them. You can make all the fun you want and feel “free” to denigrate his opposers, to denigrate anyone who is “out of the norm” for what they believe the norm is, like people who worship differently, or people with disabilities, or people who are different for one reason or another, or make choices not popular to the regime’s choices. You still feel like you have freedom of speech, when in fact, you don’t. You have freedom of abusing those who dare stand against them or be different. Freedom of abuse is not freedom of speech.
• Police controls your thoughts and not your actions.
• He politicizes (hides behind his party) the Department of Homeland Security, the Supreme Court along with issues that chip away at freedom and the country’s autonomy, like the Russian interference in elections, Covid etc. Those are blows against the country and not a political statement of any party. They should, in a healthy democracy, be dealt with accordingly and not along party lines.
• He militarizes local defense: replaces local police with military forces.
• He promotes war, dissension over healthy discussion and diplomacy, even or especially in his own country. “Divide and conquer” is the motto of his every action. The more we feel fearful and scared and not act, the easier and faster his reach advances.
• He forbids the press from attending meetings, press conferences, and makes threats that he will close TV stations and newspapers who don’t agree with his ideas. Trust me, in the beginning these are empty threats. I lived to know they will be eventually carried out.
• Freedom of press is the first rule of a true democracy. It’s in the Constitution. He does everything to undermine or discredit that. And I know this is an effort of thinking for some: but by press I do not mean Facebook, Twitter, or even Apple News. I mean find the writing of those reporters who risk their lives to tell the truth.
• Doors are closed to the press, to the people, during big decision-making meetings.
• He forbids people from testifying when subpoenaed in matters of the country, or matters that regard his truthfulness and record.
• He pardons convicted criminals for the simple reason that they are his friends.
• He swiftly and diligently turns people against each other. He establishes a culture of every-man-for-themselves-trust-no-one-everyone-wants-to-steal-lie-and-turn-you-in-get-your-guns-and-prepare-to-fight. I am here to tell you from experience that this is not democracy, folks! This is not freedom!  You’ll be left not only without freedom but without humanity. And dignity. Without respect.
• He builds literal walls to separate people. The Germans walled in the Jews in Warsaw and then walled out the free Berlin from the communist one.
• Truth tellers are silenced and ordered to be quiet, on account of not betraying secrets of state, but in truth, these are secrets of personal issues that would only incriminate the president and his clique. Another big, huge lie they love to tell is “this is for the good of the country”. Who can rebut that?! In fact, it’s only for the good of their abusing the power.
• He promotes an active agenda to shut out all other countries to allegedly focus on our own. This gives a false sense of patriotism. People are not islands. And again, history (I know! The big H word!) has proven that we’re always stronger together and no nation can exist in a void. You isolate because you’re hiding something awful. Anyone with a toddler will tell you that silence from a bedroom always means trouble.
• One of the last steps is the idea to introduce ‘patriotic education’ in schools to allegedly teach the history and truth of the country. This is the first step into making his own propaganda a mandatory subject in schools, planting it in the young minds that will later lead his way. Trust me, I learned that propaganda in all my formative years in school and my mother was forced under the penalty of death to teach it. It never taught me the “history of the country”. It only taught me he is the one and only and the almighty.
• They sow the belief that science is bad. Truth is: science makes you think. Thinking is bad in an authoritarian regime. Thinking undermines power.
• The purpose of speeches and news conferences that he leads are not to share news, but to spread propaganda. Everything they do, every move, every visit, every gesture is diabolically, minutely calculated to ensure that people know who the boss is and who has the supreme power. The only viable (for them) politics they perform is that of intimidation and ensuring people see them as the supreme force. Narcissism and not empathy is their main trait of character for such a leader. 
• Nowhere since communism have I felt that my life has no value, no meaning at all. Authoritarianism makes you feel that the simple whim of one person, a simple tantrum can make or break the fate of the entire population of the country. That no decision I make, or anyone else for that matter, will change in any way what happens to my life, to my livelihood and my well-being.
• Demonizing everyone who is not him: the media, the political opponents, the activists who want to create awareness – everyone but himself and the family is perceived as evil and a threat.
• America has a more complicated web of litigiousness that the old-school dictators did not have to worry about. In America, he must cover all traces of all wrong doings by demanding everyone in touch with his person and family to sign non-disclosure agreements. For now. Sudden imprisonment for alleged crimes against himself will follow. The threats of that have been already planted.
• Some people that do talk and show proof of their accounts are never backed up, their testimonies not confirmed and then you start doubting the media who reports the facts, when, really the manipulation from the source is the problem. 
• They create chaos so people cannot tell fiction from fact.
• And I could go on … but I stop here and thanks for making it this far.

·       Americans, from their ivory towers, cannot understand that this is not a Democrat vs Republican affair any longer. As mentioned before: there is no such thing left in America as political discourse. There is no more "let's respectfully disagree." The only thing left to argue about in today's America is this, as I see it: do we want to remain a democracy and continue to work on our problems of which we have many, many wounds and bleeding scars that must be tended to and healed, and finally strive to be the leader of democracy, peace and fairness in the world or do we allow one person, one family, one clique of opportunists to turn us all into their enablers, take us centuries behind in history, and to a place where we will eventually be starved, in extreme poverty and with no independence of thought, with no humanity and dignity to speak of, or worse? This is not political discourse. This is survival. Are Americans too ignorant, too wrapped-up in their everyday smallness of social media and love of reality TV to see the clear, legible writing on the walls and do something about it?! 

One fact I have witnessed over the almost 23 years of being in America is that they took so much out of schools that they turned America into stupid, science-deaf people with no critical thinking.

During communism I didn’t understand how this poisonous group of people led by an evil-minded criminal became powerful and the sole ruler of a country, crushing millions of individuals under their shoe. But the Revolution taught me that only the voice of people, standing together, united, with no arms other than their fists and voice boxes could overturn it.

America has not lived nor are they, as a collective, interested in learning about the tragedy of the Holocaust and of an authoritarian communist regime and might find it impossible to relate. But if that’s not bad enough, they also have a herd amnesia to their own history too. They can’t and won’t remember their own genocide of the Native Americans and the crimes of centuries against African Americans. By not learning, by not knowing, by not paying attention, America is bound for a tragedy. America is already living the early dawn of that tragedy.

I guess somewhere between chasing those rockets and eating those burgers America lost its way and its identity, if it ever truly had one, given that they didn’t resolve their own conflicts, but deepened them. I wished it then, listening to the man from Texas at my university, and I wish it now more than ever: America should finally, at least now, in what seems to be the final hour of a bleeding, wounded democracy, wake up and give a crap about history. The one they can learn from and the one they are building for their future generations.