A Harrowing Journey

 

A few days ago, I connected with a friend who is a distinguished scientific researcher at a top American university. She is an Iranian who has lived here for a long time. But recently, she did something incredibly brave: she traveled back to her embattled native country to help care for her mother and sister, who were both seriously ill. The timing couldn’t have been worse. She had to miss her teenage son’s birthday, dropping everything here because her family in Iran desperately needed her.

Shortly after this war started last winter, the Iranian leaders shut down internet access. For days at her home here in the US, all my friend could do was worry in the dark. By the time the connection was partly restored, her mother and sister were struggling so much that she felt she must make the trip to be with them.

She packed her bags and took a long, exhausting, and indirect journey, involving a third country, to reach her war-torn homeland – and later, remarkably, returned to America. I don’t know how she did it. But she has asked me for a favor: Be my voice, she said.

Now I need to tell you that when this woman writes about her science research, I have no idea what she’s writing about, and I can barely pronounce half the words. But when it comes to life issues, she is one of the most eloquent writers of English I know. I feel a little unqualified to fulfill her request but will try.

She told me that the trip taught her a huge lesson: ordinary Iranians still trust each other to find their way, despite great differences in their political views. As soon as she arrived in Iran, she saw firsthand how the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement and quiet, everyday acts of protest have changed the country. Both women and men are changing how they dress and live, simply trying to hold onto their dignity. She was amazed by their grit as they struggled to keep their spirits up.

But she also saw through their brave smiles to the deep worry underneath. As the bombs fall and the destruction and death toll rise, their hope is almost gone. They have seen Iran called the cradle of civilization in history books, but some in the modern world see Iranians as terrorists. Many of the country’s 92 million residents, my friend observes, feel caught between a harsh government at home and greedy superpowers abroad. And what breaks her heart the most is what she calls the quiet indifference of the rest of the world to the human suffering the war has caused.

And the war has produced way more than human casualties. Persia, Iran’s previous name, was once a great empire with a rich culture dating back thousands of years. How many of the remaining ancient symbols of it have been damaged or destroyed in just a few months’ time, and how many more will suffer the same fate?

My friend is reminded of a message from a famous poem written by Saadi Shirazi back in 13th-century Persia. Its truth, she says, is as real today as it was then: Human beings are like parts of one body. created from the same essence. When one part is hurt and in pain, the other parts cannot rest.

And, especially these days, should not.

Being Born Here Is the Easy Part

 

While the Constitution says we are American citizens if we were born here, a concept which the Supreme Court majority has now confirmed, that doesn’t make us better than other human beings. Luckier, yes, but we can’t take a single bit of credit for it.

I am fine with birthright citizenship, though. I am even fine with prospective parents from outside coming to this country to have children to make them legal citizens. Admittedly, we cannot take everyone in, there do have to be immigration rules – but we can take that parental desire as a compliment, at the very least.

All of that said, many of us grow up without knowing how this country works. It’s this lack of knowledge about checks and balances, knowing what government can legally do, how, and why, that contributes to spotty election results.

I’ve said it before: I think all who were born here and are legal citizens should still have to pass the same test that immigrants seeking citizenship face. It would be good if a civics test like that were made a condition of getting a high school diploma. I originally wanted to exempt Native Americans and the descendants of slaves – but now I think it should apply to everyone.

A somewhat related issue troubles me a bit, and it may sound a little contradictory for me to say it. But I think our Presidents should not necessarily have to have been born here. On the surface, that birth requirement sounds good, but in fact, there are many foreign-born people, including some who can legally occupy lower elected offices, who might make good candidates for President. They of course would have to be naturalized American citizens, and I would have no problem with a lengthy residency requirement, along with the current age rules. How many people of quality could be serving us but are disqualified because of this birthplace thing? If they can convince voters of their love of this country and their adherence to its values, that should be the prime qualification.

We may have been born here ourselves, but most of us can point to ancestors who were immigrants – yes, some brought here against their will, but still coming from someplace else.

The United States would not be here if it weren’t for immigrants, and it is more than just a place on a map, It’s an idea that draws many people here. Let’s be sure we can maintain that idea, hopefully for another 250 years.

 

Tarnish on a Gold Standard

 Not only is this week the end of the road for Stephen Colbert; it also marks the end for CBS Radio News, which would have been a century old next year. Who can forget Edward R. Murrow, one of the many voices who got audiences through World War II?

I had a small part in CBS Radio history when I signed on as a desk assistant, the radio equivalent of a newspaper copy boy, at WCBS Newsradio 88, which met its own demise a couple of years ago. It became the second all-news station in New York in 1967, and I started working there shortly thereafter. Our anchor staff at that time included a young Charles Osgood. Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes fame was then a reporter. I got a Christmas card from him that year. Anyway, I remember his covering an ongoing school controversy in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn. This involved a struggle between Black and Puerto Rican parents and the powerful teachers’ unions over community control of schools and had a critical impact on education policy in the city.

Another big story at the time centered on Francine Gottfried, a 20-year-old clerical worker at a bank in the financial district whose curvaceousness actually stopped traffic as she walked to work. She was called the Wall Street Sweater Girl, and it might sound frivolous, but as the crowds grew, it just had to be covered.

But I also saw how quickly a newsroom became a very serious place when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to put down what was called the Prague Spring, in which Czech leaders tried to advance human rights, much to the Russians’ chagrin.

A simple electronic advancement led to a major union dispute. WCBS got new Norelco handheld cassette recorders for the reporters to use, but the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers argued it was their job to handle sound using big Nagra machines. I almost caused a strike myself when I worked with a studio tape recorder at 3:30 a.m. to practice reading news and the IBEW shop steward caught me.

One afternoon I answered the phone and a man identifying himself as Dr. Wood said, “Please tell the anchors that they are mispronouncing the name of that South American country’s new president.” Charles Osgood was on the air, and during a break I told him,” Some crackpot named Dr. Wood called to say you’re not pronouncing a name right.” Mr. Osgood did not laugh but found a note pad and asked me what I was told about how to say the name. Turned out Dr. Wood was a linguist at a major university contracted to ensure that foreign word pronunciations were uniform among all the anchors.

I learned a lot that summer. Some of us will miss CBS Radio News. I certainly hope so.

Taking Out the Bad Ones

 

One of President Trump’s recent executive orders calls for ending the moratorium on the death penalty in federal criminal cases, speeding up their prosecution, and allowing the use of historical methods like the firing squad, electrocution, and the gas chamber.

Let me start by saying that I am viscerally opposed to the death penalty, but I’m not going to begin here with a debate about its propriety, but instead, about how it’s...um…executed. Over time in this country, we mostly sidelined the older methods as cruel and unusual. I guess my position is, if we must have the death penalty, let’s use methods that get the job done as quickly as possible.

Lethal injection was designed to be humane, but it hasn’t always worked well. My macabre joke is that if the cocktail of drugs employed in some states had a commercial on TV it would have to carry a warning that one of the side effects was LIFE. Injection with pentobarbital is allowed federally now, but death can take up to 10 minutes.

Electrocution is about the same as injection, it appears, while the gas chamber might not induce death for almost 20 minutes, according to reports. Even a firing squad would not always produce the immediate death of the target. Strictly from a layman’s point of view, I would imagine the guillotine or the executioner’s axe seem most efficient, though unpleasantly messy. OK, I’ll stop with this part now.

At one time, executions were very public events, the idea being that they served as deterrent, as in, “Look what will happen to you if you do what this person did!” I’m not sure the death penalty now accomplishes that purpose. It’s also argued that a disproportionate number of minority people are on death rows because of unfair convictions.

But I’d be willing to bet that most victims’ families are not all that interested in revenge in the form of seeing the perpetrator suffer. They just want the security of knowing that they no longer have to share space on this planet with that individual, and they get it with an execution. No chances of the perp being sprung on appeal or through a pardon.

However, there are also stories about lifers being rehabilitated in prison, truly repenting their crimes. Beyond that, there are even accounts of perpetrators meeting victims’ family members and being forgiven.

As for the death penalty, though, we might consider that one of the Ten Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Kill. There is a period after the last word. We have added a whole bunch of “unlesses” since Moses brought down those stone tablets from the mountain.

Playing with Fire, or Using It

 

I have a relationship with AI. I’ve tried to fight it. But it’s really useful. I ask my phone a question, and a lovely female voice answers it. Now I know it’s not human and I could change the voice, but I guess the system understood me well enough to know I would prefer the female.

All of that said, I know the limits here. When I ask a question, it’s almost always about a fact, a date in history, is someone dead or alive, or how to do something very practical and specific. If I have a question about Microsoft Word, for example, in the old days of a few years ago, I would have had to watch a 20-minute YouTube and hope the producer would cover the topic. Or my query would have brought back 50 different links to scroll through. But the AI woman instantly gives me the solution. Now, she could be wrong, but if it sounds logical, I might at least try it. MY choice.

What I don’t do is ask her questions on higher-level topics, for example, what is the meaning of life? Her answer might be interesting, but I know she is not qualified to handle such a question.

I don’t ask AI to write things for me, or even speak for me in my own voice, which it could easily do now. I guess it just wouldn’t feel genuine, which is important to me.

Many of us are afraid of AI and think it could spell the end of our civilization. Maybe. The good news is, humans have learned to live with, and harness, destructive forces like fire. We use it for heat and cook with it, and for millennia, used it for light too. We don’t stick our hand in it, that hurts.

OK, but can we learn to manage the new monster that we have created? We have done OK with fire and electricity, and even TV, all of which were said to be major threats to our well-being. Will this new thing take our jobs, drain our energy, and render us useless before destroying our species?

All these new things change us, and not always for the better. But none of them master us, unless we allow it, and that’s where the problem is. Even when solutions are in front of us, as with climate change, we ignore them.

But we are humans, dammit, and we’re pretty smart, albeit a little slow. I’m still optimistic. Why, I don’t know. But I’m not gonna ask HER.