Voter Greeter

In January I was a “first time” voter in Taiwan’s presidential election. In March I was one of two “first time” election inspectors where I “worked” the Michigan Presidential Primary election on March 10th. Voting was much the same in both places, though it seemed more joyful in Taiwan. 

At the polling station here in Michigan, there were two separate precincts in the same room. I was first posted at the greeting table, where I helped people discover whether they would vote on the west or the east side of the room. They had to fill out and sign an application card giving their address, then turn that card in at a later station before putting their marked ballots into a box. After a couple hours as a greeter, I was moved to the “tear the stubs off of completed ballots and pass out stickers” station. Eventually I also got to “give people blank ballots” at a different station. So now, except for running the computer and sealing up records and ballots at the end of the day, I can do most of the needed stuff.

I enjoyed every different job I did. As a greeter I was occasionally privileged to use Spanish to help people get started. As the guy who tore the stubs off of ballots and issued “I voted” stickers, I was able to be all smiles and “thank yous”.

Twice I was informed of what appeared to have been an out-of-town voter suppression effort. Two different women mentioned that they had received postcards from something called the “Michigan Voters’ Project” informing them that there was no record that they’d ever voted, so they should go to the city clerk to clear things up before wasting their time going to vote. Each of these women mentioned that she never misses an election. The first was an elderly and white, the second was elderly and Hispanic. 

The day after the election I received notice by email that I’d neglected to sign a paper to enable the city to pay me for my service,  so I should visit the clerk’s office. While there, signing one thing, I relayed the information about the postcards. Whether or not it comes to anything, or means anything, or was misunderstood by all of us, at least the news of it no longer sits on my conscience. 

Next time I work the polls (there are 4 elections in Michigan this year), I’ll try to be a voter greeter for as much of the day as they’ll let me. Maybe this will expand, and, who knows, I could work my way up to a position at Walmart!

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Certified

A scholar from Germany whom I met in the early 80s in Taiwan once made an interesting cultural comparison that came back to me recently. She was talking about the eventual disposition of certificates, like those issued at the end of academic study programs. She said that in her (admittedly limited) experience, Taiwanese people would frame diplomas and hang them on the wall of their living rooms. Americans would do the same thing, but hang them in their offices. The British, she said, would file them in a drawer, and Germans would lose them. 

Of course, like all such comparisons, this was more a “truism” than a truth. And, of course, it was arranged to make one’s own group come out as the most noble. But it came back to me when, a week or so ago, I attended training to become an election inspector in the State of Michigan. Before being allowed to work at the polls for the presidential primary election (conducted on March 10), I had to attend a 3-hour training session, most of the content of which was given to participants in a handbook.  This was for the purpose of certification. Though I’ve seen no certificate, I must now be qualified, because my name was on the list when I reported for work early that morning. 

Way back in 1976, when I first arrived in Taiwan and was teaching in a 6-week residential program for university students, I was surprised at the end of things to be signing “certificates of completion” for a privately, and not very professionally, run course. When I took up permanent residence in 1982 I began, as well, to begin collecting these pieces of paper, sometimes even presented in frames, for things I had done. Eventually just out of interest I began throwing them into a folder (instead of into the trash) which I cleaned out and tossed when I retired and departed Taiwan in 2018. I had laminated certificates from universities where I’d attended some sort of 3-hour cultural program on holiday foods. I had framed certificates from being a judge in a children’s speech contest in a little country town. I had blood donation certificates, and on and on. 

Now I’m a certified election inspector in the State of Michigan. There must be a record of that in someone’s computer, and the sign-in sheet to which I affixed my name at the door when I went in is likely filed in some archives. But as for a piece of paper, I’ve nothing. I wonder, am I ahead or behind?

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

Rethinking

During my first two or three years in Taiwan, from 1976 through 1978, I didn’t speak much, if any, Chinese. For social interaction I relied, as have expatriates throughout the ages, on local people who could converse in English and on other foreigners. Life was lonely, but tolerable.

One of the guys who spoke English fairly well and liked to hang around with me was a student in a Veterinary school. His plan was to eventually do advanced study in the USA, so his need for English practice and mine for conversation coincided.  The late 70s were a time of some political turmoil in Taiwan, and by membership in the Presbyterian Church I was assumed (correctly) to be among the “anti government” crowd. But I had been carefully taught to keep my opinions to myself.  

One day, though, in conversation with a friend much more at the center of things, I was warned to be careful of my associations. Word had come “through channels” that I’d made statements that bordered on unacceptability. I tried to imagine who would have reported me, and landed on my Veterinary student friend.  I was wrong. 

It turned out that I’d been reported by a clergyman who was angling to get himself and his children out of the country before his son hit the age when he would have to stay and complete his military service before being allowed out. When I learned this, I had to re-think my impressions of a man whom I thought had befriended me sincerely.
I’m currently part of a group of “old guys” who meet every other week to gripe about and support each other in the task of getting older. A week ago we read a short article by Arthur Brooks, who retired recently from his position as the chief of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank.  Though the article was about accepting our mutual decline as old guys, I was, nonetheless, skeptical. After all, he was from the AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE. So I read carefully. I’ve had to do more rethinking. Brooks was spot-on in his description of what I’m learning to accept.

As I go forward, I imagine that I’ll be rethinking a lot of first impressions.  

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Headlines

Part of culture shock during my initial year in Taiwan, which began in July of 1976, was the dearth of English language reading matter. I hadn’t realized how MUCH I had habitually read before getting to a place where there wasn’t that much to read just lying around or on billboards and such. One consequence was that I absorbed almost everything printed in the daily English language newspaper, a house organ of the ruling Nationalist Party, which in those days was virtually the English language version of the Central Daily News, the OFFICIAL party paper. BOTH of these publications disappeared early in the 21st century.

Getting all of one’s news from a single source, we’ve learned, is a dangerous thing. Getting it all from a rabidly partisan source is possibly perilous. After a year of that diet, I was beginning to consider the possibility that any day the forces of the ROC military, under the leadership of one general or another, would be launching the attack that would recover China under the Three Principles of the People.  After all, the headlines on otherwise numbingly dull reports about meetings held here and there in Taipei seemed to indicate so. It took but a gentle challenge from a freshly arrived volunteer from upstate New York oto send that house of cards tumbling down.

Headlines can summarize, entice or repel readers who are scanning for something to read. In these days of social media, they can be clickbait.  The local newspaper that I now read on the 6 days it arrives every week (there’s no Monday edition) sometimes has real clunkers and sometimes uses acronyms decipherable only by VERY long-term residents. A week ago there was one that made me want to put down an entire section: 

Dog Vomit Slime is Good for Your Plants.

I really don’t care that it is, I’m going nowhere near it. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

How is Taiwan Facing the Coronavirus?

I am ALWAYS proud to be associated, both by long residence and by citizenship, with Taiwan. I am doubly proud of my country for this extraordinarily good response to yet another imprtation from and imposition by the large empire next door.

Taiwan Insight

Written by Josie-Marie Perkuhn.

Image credit: 總統視導「陸軍第33化學兵群防疫整備」by 總統府/Flickr, license CC BY 2.0

The sheer scope of the Coronavirus (2019-nCov) has taken the world’s breath away: the numbers of infected mainlanders have increased dramatically. According to a WHO Report, since January 23^rd—when the first infected women arrived in Taoyuan International Airport—the number of confirmed cases in Taiwan has reached 23. Taiwan-based COVID-tracking webpage also reports 24 deaths, which is corroborated by ifeng News. Additionally, Taiwan’s health minister Chen Shih-Chung (陳時中), along with confirming the first fatality, has stated that a violation of reporting will be fined up to NT 150,00. As of writing, it is unclear how the deceased taxi driver became infected since he spent no time outside the island.

Given this, Taiwan’s problems go beyond the purely medical. The medical concern is to prevent any further infection. However, the political involvement of the…

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The Water Man Cometh

When we took up full-time residence in Taiwan in 1982 we began to encounter things that we hadn’t known existed when we were short-termers there in the 1970s. One of these was a bimonthly visit from the water company man, asking for payment on the spot for the water bill he had in his hand, in cash!  The electric company man made similar visits back then, but I don’t recall if they were monthly or not. Of course, over time everything went to bills coming in the mail which could be paid at the bank, or arrangements for direct payment from the bank, and eventually to paying those, and almost all other bills, at 7-Eleven.

I was moved to remember these things about 10 days ago when a letter came from the local Bureau of Public Works, which takes care of water, power, sewage and garbage services here. It was a notice that someone would have to visit our house to change a remote sensing meter that measures our water use. Apparently when all the batteries in all such meters were changed in our neighborhood some months back, our house was skipped. It was suspected that we’d have to give access to the basement.  I called and made an appointment, then moved stuff downstairs to give access to the meter.

On the appointed morning, a gentleman knocked on the back door (front doors and use of doorbells seem to be eschewed by people hereabouts). He said that he’d found the sensing unit outside and gently grumbled about it having been missed by “the guy who came by before.” After a while his truck left. No cash needed.  

Now I wonder if, with improved sensing, our water bill will rise, and if they’ll go back to estimate under-metering and hit us for the months of what I fear were “under-reported”.  But for all those fears, I’m grateful for the memory of those years in Taiwan. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.  

 

Lessons from a Public Speaking Event

In February we attended a dinner and program. The dinner, though “so-so”, was better than we’d have cooked at home. The program was better. A local history enthusiast was trying out an illustrated lecture about a local celebrity whose work in the 30s and 40s led to this town’s pre-eminent cultural festival and the establishment of an environmental forest nearby.AND the development of an environmental forest in a nearby township. 

Ms. Lida Rogers, not originally from Holland, came to town after college to teach biology at the high school in the 1920s. We learned that she: never married; loved trees, flowers and students; advocated for civic beautification; and promoted, Dutch culture. She had not a sidgen of Dutch ancestry, but she pushed it as the centerpiece of the annual Tulip Time celebrations that began in 1931.

Her interest in trees linked up with that of a landowner who donated 40 acres of used up farmland to the school district for an arboretum.  It became her project. She led students to clear the land of trees she detested, and to plant those she liked. She also purchased an adjacent 40 acres for a commercial Christmas tree farm. Many local youth labored at one or the other. 

We’re relatively new here, so had no connection to Tulip Time, the forest or the Christmas tree farm. We didn’t know Lida Rogers, nor did we recognize the names of the students and other prominent citizens or teachers in the pictures that accompanied the talk.  But many of the other people in the audience did, even recognizing cousins, former classmates, and teachers from their youth. The presenter worked these recognitions into her talk, leading to a real intimacy with the group. There were lots of pictures drawn from old yearbooks and scrapbooks found in the city’s museum and library. The presenter even wore a costume modeled from a picture she found from the 1940s. I left feeling that I had learned a lot, but also that I had seen and heard too much. There was no pause. It was a relief to reach the end of the hour. 

Some years back I learned that being on “the speaking circuit” can be highly remunerative. An arrow aimed at Mrs. Clinton during her campaign for president in 2016 had to do with how much she was paid to speak to business and academic assemblies. The American conservative commentator, William F. Buckley, wrote many books and columns, but he made even more speeches, for which he was RICHLY compensated, and he was a master speaker (I could only HOPE to be so good at it).  Should I aspire to a retirement vocation as a public speaker, I’ll take some lessons from what I learned at the presentation about Lida Rogers. Make the speech about the topic, not about how I learned it.

1. Use photos, but not that many.
2. Use names that might be recognized, but not EVERY name.
3. If you wear a costume, you don’t have to talk about it. It speaks for itself. 

Though my Taiwan experiences might provide a source for speech topics, they may be thin soup if that’s all I have to say. As they apply to wider topics in culture and tie to the lived experience of such an audience that may have gathered to hear me speak, they’ll have a value beyond an evening’s diversion. Escapist as any experience that I provide may be, it’ll have to give more if I should hope for an invitation to return, and an opportunity to earn another honorarium. 

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.  

Bring Out Your Stuff!

Before television came to Taiwan in the 1960s, people lived in neighborhoods. I once asked a group of “women of a certain age” what their families did in the evenings before TV. They said that they’d take their meals out into the lanes and chat with neighbors, sometimes sharing what they had cooked with each other. They would talk with their spouses and children if they sat at a table to eat.  “And now…?” I asked. “We sit looking at the screen and chew.”

Other aspects of the neighborhoods and lanes of Kaohsiung (where I lived from 1982 to 2007) included the many “buyers of of old brass and broken pewter” who circulated on three wheel carts collecting recyclables. As Taiwan developed, their techniques changed, and then they disappeared.  I recall a particular rattle that some of them used, the sound of which would draw people out the door with things no longer of use. Eventually the pedaled carts gave way to those with motorcycle engines attached, and the rattles to tape players and loudspeakers shouting out the message, “I buy broken bicycles, broken washing machines and broken electric fans.” 

When the number of those guys diminished, a lot of recycling went to the twice-a-week truck that follows garbage trucks in many cities. When China stopped buying recyclables in 2018, that really cut off the freelance market. 

I thought of those guys last week while at a meeting where a June date for a neighborhood cleanup was being planned in my corner of Holland, MI.  The neighborhood association has funds available to rent several empty dumpsters for a day. We discussed places to locate them, rounding up volunteers to load them, and ways to notify folks about when bring old mattresses, furniture, appliances and stuff for free disposal. Someone mentioned that elderly and disabled folks will need help getting these things out of their houses, and that most people will need help getting junk to the dumpsters.  Then one guy at the meeting named several good-hearted neighbors have pickup trucks and others have trailers. This makes scheduled pickups routes and appointments to get things out of houses could be offered.  

I thought of the guys with the rattles, and fondly dreamt of Taiwan yet again.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

Industrial Scale Crafting

Decades ago, when I watched more television, I saw a made-for TV movie about an Appalachian family that had moved to Detroit because of jobs available there in the 1920s. The “movie family” had been designed to include a spectrum of responses to the move; from “I love it here,” through “the money’s good, but the work is killing me,” to “I just want to go home.” The father worked in a factory, where he adopted a mass production mentality. The mother stayed home, cooking, doing laundry, and coping with her children’s problems.  

She and son about 12 years old began hand-making wooden toys which the son peddled on street corners. One evening the father suggested using power tools to up production, lower costs and increase profits. The son related that he had been warned by a police officer that peddling without a license was a violation. He told how he had given the cop a free toy for his kids and gotten out of the citation. The mother was appalled by both the idea of mass production and the reality of bribing a policeman. She wanted to go home. Eventually the family came apart, and viewers were treated to the moral of the story, “There’s no place like home.”

Industrial handicrafting became a reality for me in Taiwan starting in 2006 when I began doing fabric art. I didn’t plan things so much as throw them together, making patchworks of  recycled campaign flags. The materials were free, the work was easy, and when results were ugly could be tossed without regret. 

Of late, a different “industrial” process has taken over the “handicrafting” I do with words. My project has been the mass production of short sung pieces for use in churches These are  not “hymns” but “buttons” that move a worshipping congregation from one thing to another, or that “do” the thing in and of themselves. These are things like “call to prayer”, “assurance of pardon” and such. Most start with an on-topic Bible verse that gets bent, stretched or squeezed into a tune. The tunes themselves (I can’t write tunes) are public domain things, sometimes ‘classical’ stuff from Europe, and other times folk tunes from wherever. 

 

I’ve learned that by selecting the verses one by one, “lining them up” on a computer screen, I find a singable line, choose a tune, and then “work the magic” on what’s left. In the past 3 months I’ve done more than 150 of them. Like the patchworks I did in Taiwan, many may be “ugly” and others worthy of disposal, but I’m having a good time.  

Though I long to go home (“there’s no place like Taiwan”), I’m finding something to do here.   

By the way, DON’T look for me on Etsy.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

The Habit of Work

From the time we relocated to Tainan (from Kaohsiung) in 2007, my work day began most mornings at 8AM when I arrived at the college chapel to do simultaneous translation. For a few years it began even earlier when I was scheduled to teach an  8:10 AM class at a university about 30 minutes’ drive north of town. Being retired in America now, it’s become difficult to know when things begin. Without “work” to go to, it’s hard to form a new set of habits.

This was drawn to the front of my mind last week at a lecture about conditions in Bosnia. The presenter is involved in a program that brings Bosnian students of diverse ethnicities to a leadership training and “getting to know you” conference in the summer. A few of those students also become eligible for a few weeks’ residential internship in or near Kalamazoo, MI. 

She told how her family had hosted one of those students last year, and how, among that student’s observations was surprise that everyone in the household got up in the morning and went out to work. This was not, as might be supposed, because “Dad has his office and Mom takes care of the home,” but that everyone had jobs.

Since the terrible war that raged in Bosnia after Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, unemployment there has been high. Even now it hovers above 30%. Students now in university have grown up in homes where “having a job” was not very likely for ANY member of their household. Somehow they and their families have survived, but certain habits and expectations have disappeared. 

In Taiwan, with which we’re much more familiar, the unemployment rate hovers below 4%, making it hard to even IMAGINE there not being a job, or even JOBS in a household. For young people in Taiwan, to have parents even sit still for a few minutes is about as unimaginable as it is for Bosnian youth to imagine someone going out to work regularly each day. 

Our perspectives get skewed by where we are.   

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.