JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

You probably can’t identify these two men but they are going to have a profound impact on your life.

On Tuesday Americans re-elected Barack Obama to the US Presidency, and on Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party Congress gets underway in Beijing to choose the new leadership that will lead China for the next ten years. It’s been twenty years since these two nations transferred power at the same time, and it will be 20 years before it happens again. Two systems, two processes, two changes in government – but the transfer couldn’t be more different.

Every ten years there is a changing of the guard in China and new leadership is designated for the coming decade. Unlike America, where 300,000,000 people have an opportunity to express their opinion and vote for the President, China’s new leadership is selected by a small committee of the Communist Party. The Politburo Standing Committee chooses the next Party Chief/President and the Prime Minister and then rules by consensus through them for the next ten years. Right now there is a not so secret power struggle going at the highest levels in the party. Factions within the party are attempting to consolidate their power and promote their own agendas and candidates. They are jockeying for positions and appointment to the Politburo Standing Committee which has historically had nine members but will likely be reduced to seven which will concentrate power even more. Most of these factions and power players are descendants of revolutionary heroes, who have over the years consolidated their power and influence. The amazing thing, to me, is that the man or woman on the street in Shanghai might find it just as hard to identify Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, the two gentlemen at the top of this post, as you do. That is how uninvolved the ordinary people of China are in this important change in government. This is a one party system ruled by insiders.

Contrast that with America – which couldn’t be messier. I, for one, am exhausted from the months of campaigning and truly glad that the election is over. Yet, it was, arguably, one of the most important US elections in the last 70 years. Six billion dollars ($6,000,000,000) was spent in the process, and it looks like the result affirms the status quo. Obama in the White House, the Democrats in control of the Senate and the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives. Republicans began campaigning against Obama in 2009, just one year after the last Presidential election and effectively blocked all Democratic legislation after the spring of 2010. Mitt Romney began his campaign for the office seven years ago. There must be a better, cheaper, fairer way to get do this.

Is campaign finance reform out of the question? Wouldn’t a level playing field seem more in alignment with our principles than one heavily weighted toward the rich? Clearly, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United has had a monumentally profound impact on how campaigns are financed and an extremely negative effect on the transparency of the process. I am a staunch advocate of free speech, but Citizens United is a perversion of the principle, because it undermines one man one vote and effectively turns the election over to the richest of the rich. I can blog my little ass off but the Koch brothers and other anonymous donors can give millions of dollars to Super Pacs that distort and mislead because they are “issue oriented.” We had a leg up on the process with McCain-Feingold but the Supreme’s killed the duck with one shot.

Nevertheless, our messy, lopsided, probably unfair and unbalanced process looks pretty good compared with what’s going on in China. It is now illegal in Beijing to possess balloons, pamphlets, homing pigeons, ping pong balls or anything that might carry a negative political message. Taxi drivers are reminded to check the back seats of their cabs for subversive materials that passengers may have been left behind. CNN and BBC TV feeds are now blocked, and 130 dissidents have been rounded up and will be held until after the transfer of power (NPR).

I’m personally glad Obama will remain in the White House. I don’t think Mitt Romney is a bad person; I just don’t believe he understood the people he wanted to govern or that he had the interests of ALL the people in his plan for America.

But – remember those two faces at the top of this page. The People’s Standing Committee is still haggling over the coming changes, but whoever emerges as China’s leaders may have more influence in your life than either of the two candidates in our election.

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It’s the first of November and the summer honeymoon is over. Seattleites were blessed with an extended summer and a short gloriously beautiful fall, but last week everything changed and now we’re looking at six months of drizzle with occasional drenching downpours. Suddenly we have to recalibrate and refocus. There’s a sort of climatic amnesia in Seattle that helps us keep the memory of Sunlight Affective Disorder (SAD) at bay while we spend a few months on the lake or riding our bikes on the Burke-Gilman Trail. But, every year about this time we are driven indoors and we have to develop survival strategies for the next six or seven months.

After living the last three years in Saigon I am seeing Seattle through a different lens. I miss Saigon, but when I was there I began to miss the yeasty culture of Seattle – art, theater, movies, books, restaurants, sports and even the politics. So one of the first things we did when we came home was to renew our membership in the Seattle Art Museum. and check out the first big show of the fall – Elles: Pompidou a show of women artists that ran at the Centre Pompidou in Paris for two years. The range is extraordinary and the cultural point is that these women were largely subordinate to male artists working in the same period – 1907 – 2012. The Guerilla Girls poster below says it all.

It’s an awareness raising experience to see the show. I’ve been three times so far and plan to visit again. SAM has added to the exhibit by running a concurrent exhibit of women artists from its own collection – Frankenthaler, Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Laurie Anderson and the like.

It feels like I am taking the first steps in the seasonal change transition. Last night we went on the First Thursday Art Walk, a monthly event where the downtown galleries stay open and the gallery association provides a map and a written guide to what’s going on in the Seattle art scene. I didn’t see much that was new or exciting except at the Greg Kucera Gallery on 3rd Avenue South. He has a great space and enough of it to show several artists without having them interfere with each other’s individual styles. First Thursday also features live music at SAM, and I plan to make it a regular stop on the winter beat. With an umbrella and a parka I ought to be able to survive for awhile.

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In March, during the Republican primary season and in the run up to the selection of Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate, I returned to Saigon and felt such relief to get out of the American news cycle where every media outlet was consumed with stories about the Republican debates and delegate counts. I returned in May, just in time to see the candidates from both parties redirect their messages to the November election. Right now, I wish I could opt out again and clear my head of the hype and contentiousness that will overload the news cycles until November 6th.

On Sunday night (October 7, 2012) I was transported to another realm – one where the good guy wins and justice is served up in a magical, mythical way. The CBS 60 Minutes segment, narrated by Bob Simon, told the story of a remarkable musician and an equally remarkable man named Sixto Rodriguez known musically only by his surname – Rodriquez. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7424704n&tag=contentAux;mostShared

His story is as improbable and inspiring as the award winning documentary about him. Searching for Sugarman. is the film that opened the Sundance Film Festival this year and was awarded its prestigious Special Jury Prize. Sony picked it up and it is in nationwide release now. I saw it on Tuesday night and was overwhelmed and mesmerized by the mythic story of this incredible man.

Briefly, he is the son of Mexican immigrants and grew up in Detroit. He wrote songs and played Detroit clubs with names like The Sewer and The Brewery in the early ’70s. He signed a recording contract with a local record company, recorded two albums, Cold Fact and Coming From Reality that got good reviews but never made the charts. In the mid-70s he gave up his dream of a musical career and resumed his life as a day laborer, doing demolition and hard labor clean up work. He’s lived in the same house in a poor Detroit neighborhood for 40 years, raised 3 daughters there, educated them while getting himself a degree in philosophy. It’s alternately a nightmare and a fairy tale, the story an overlooked talent who gave up on his dream. But, Rodriguez’s story is different and has a very different outcome.

Jump cut to 1998 when a young Swedish filmmaker, visiting South Africa in search of a documentary subject, meets a record store owner in Cape Town who tells him the legend of Rodriguez. Legend had it that the elusive Rodriguez doused himself in gasoline on stage during a performance and self-immolated – a true martyr’s death – and the legend of his spectacular death perpetuated the myth about him. That was until the filmmaker and the record store owner decided to track down the truth.

I know it is hard to believe but Rodriguez is more famous in South Africa than either Elvis or the Beatles. Even though his song I Wonder was the anthem of the anti-apartheid movement Rodriguez never knew it, and even though half a million of his records were sold there he never received a penny in royalties. For two years, in the 1990’s the Swedish filmmaker and the record store owner followed the trail of clues that eventually led them to Rodriguez in Detroit. It’s a fairy tale come true. The film was made and is getting Oscar buzz and Rodriguez is touring again. He has made three trips to South Africa and played to sold out stadiums, and I missed him in Seattle the night after I saw the film, because the show was sold out. He’s making some money now, but he has shared it with his family and given the rest of it away to worthy causes. You’ve got to love this guy. He exemplifies the best in American values. The politicians could learn something from him – modesty, humility, talent, hard work, family values – all the things they chatter about. He has them all.

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This photograph was taken in Miami in 1982. I was a co-pilot for Pan Am at the time and somebody had managed to sell Pan Am on the idea of publishing a book about the airline’s heritage that included a rogue’s gallery of all the pilots. Most of us bought the finished product, which is all many of us have to show for our time and for the legacy of Pan Am. In those days I didn’t own a camera so this is the only picture I have of myself in a Pan Am uniform. I’m grateful to the guy who came up with the book idea if only for the picture.

Earlier this year I finished my Saigon Diary blog (http://jackbernardstravels.blogspot.com) and started brainstorming about its successor. In the process I’ve come to see my life in stages – chunked out in segments of school(s), military time, career choices, jobs held, jobs lost, health problems, places lived, friendships, marriages, family – and those chunks have given me my current perspective on politics, art, literature, adventure, health and everything else. It makes sense to use the new blog to connect my history to what is going on in my life and the world now.

I was hired by Pan Am in January of 1967. The previous 9 months, working as a lawyer in LA, had been a miserable experience, and I saw working for an airline as a way to get out and gain some breathing room. Little did I imagine that this escape from lawyering would last 20 years. I did my initial Pan Am training as a navigator and 707 co-pilot in New York but transferred to San Francisco as soon as I could. Except for two years of medical leave I was based there until the fall of 1972 when I was involuntarily transferred back to New York. The SF years coincided with the ramp up and most intense period of the Vietnam War so I flew a lot of R&R flights to and from Saigon, Danang, Chu Lai, and Cam Ranh Bay during those years. The ’60s and ’70s were also the glory days at PAA with real First Class service as well as long crew layovers in Tahiti, Hawaii, Sydney, Beirut, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London and other great locations. It was a dream job, the best of the best in commercial aviation. Over the Pan Am years I was based in NY, SF, Berlin, and Miami, but the longest period was the 10 years I spent in Berlin.

The Pan Am years were the most formative ones in my life in many ways. I was divorced with a child when they began. I married Abby in 1968. My first wife, Carolyn, was killed in a car accident in 1971 and our son, Brent, came to live with me and Abby. Douglas and Diana were born in 1972 and 1975. We bought our first house, in Mill Valley, in 1971 and two years later we moved to Idaho when I was transferred back to NY. In 1975 I was lucky enough to get a Berlin assignment and we packed up the family and crossed the ocean to start a whole new life experience as expats. The family moved back to Idaho in 1983 but I continued to work in Berlin until 1986 when a second episode of myasthenia gravis ended my flying days.

While the Pan Am experience was wonderful in many ways but troublesome in others. I could never have voluntarily left a job that was so easy, fun, and paid so well, but it was also an unhealthy life – hard on the body, hard on the marriage, hard on the kids, and anything but normal by conventional standards. It ended for me in 1986. Pan Am went out of business in 1991 but by then I was on a different path. The myasthenia gravis put me on medical leave, but a year later when I was healthy enough to work Abby and I started our small Italian country-style restaurant in Ketchum, Idaho. I feel lucky. For some reason I have been able to look forward rather than backward when I’ve had to change tracks. Whether it was illness, divorce, a lost job or an unforeseen event I have been able to let go of the past. When I look back on Pan Am I have the feeling that it happened to an entirely different person. Did I really spend 20 years as a commercial pilot? I feel the same about the 7 years I flew Marine fighters and the 7 years I owned and operated the restaurant. They were all great times, but it feels as if they were lived by someone other than myself. I’m not sure I’ve always been able to live in the moment, but I don’t yearn for another better time that is in my past.

Today I’m married to a woman I’ve known since I was 10 years old and we live just a few miles from where we grew up. I love my life now but I’m also glad for all the other lives I’ve lived. No regrets.

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In July of 2009 I retired from the Alliance for Education, a Seattle non-profit supporting public education, and in August I accepted an offer to become the Development Director for East Meets West Foundation in Saigon. For 30 years I told people I wanted to write and for 30 years I used work as an excuse not to write – so in August of 2009 I started blogging about the experience of living and working in Saigon. The blog became my discipline and for three years I posted reflections on the Saigon experience at http://jackbernardstravels.blogspot.com.

After three years in Saigon the job with East Meets West came to an end and I posted my last Saigon Diary entry on September 27, 2012. I have no excuse now. I am retired from full time, paid for service, work. It’s time to get down to the business of writing. It didn’t seem appropriate to stay with the Saigon Diary website, so this is a new blog with an entirely different theme. I could call it Seattle Diary, since I’m back in Seattle, but that sounds a little provincial for what I have in mind. Surviving Seattle, seems more targeted since I want to explore all the options – culture, art, literature, politics, nature, and even travel – that might help me mitigate or overcome SAD (Sunlight Affective Disorder). As a dedicated sun worshiper who has lived in Sun Valley, Berkeley, LA, Salt Lake City, St.Tropez, Saigon, and the like, Seattle is a challenge -lots of rain and very little sun. But, there are options indoors and out. Seattle offers an expansive menu of ways to amuse, educate, entertain, and recreate, so my goal is to write about whatever pops up on the menu on a particular day or week. I’m going to write about whatever seems interesting as I move around this and/or other cities – music, plays, movies, restaurants, books, adventures, politics, current affairs and the like. I’m jazzed and curious about where they will take me – the writing and the adventures.

When I was in grad school at UC Berkeley and living on a buck a day I worked out a plan to keep myself from getting bored. The Daily Californian, the student newspaper, published a list of events taking place on the campus – lectures, movies, music, speakers, writers, poets, political rallies, sports events, dance demonstrations, art and architecture shows, etc – something of interest for almost everyone.  I promised myself that I would take advantage of the opportunities and, if possible, do something on the Daily Californian list every day – and I did for almost three years. It was a broadening experience to say the least. Later, when I was poor and living in New York I used the Village Voice as my resource to find similar things in Manhattan. There are an amazing number of free or inexpensive events happening every day in almost every city.

I’m not living on a buck a day now but I’m also not working, so I need to have a plan to keep myself from getting bored. I’m not as poor as I was in Berkeley or New York, so I’m going to include plays, concerts, restaurants, and the like in this blog. Many of my co-workers at Pan Am, my classmates at Berkeley, and my friends and neighbors are retired now. They play golf and fiddle with their portfolios. I don’t play golf and there is not enough in my portfolio to fiddle with. My friend, Dennis, used to say “I’ve invested heavily in pleasure and it has paid great dividends.”  I think that also sums up my life. So, I plan to scan the papers, websites, and bulletin boards for things that might be interesting. There will be some surprises, both good and bad. You can read about them here in the future. I hope you find them interesting.

Jack

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