Zombie Life

Sometime in our final year in Taiwan, during a conversation at Chang Jung Christian University, Char was asked a question by a young woman who had watched too many movies about Zombies.  “If your husband became a zombie, would you shoot him?” 

In mid February, Char got to contemplate that in a real-life situation.  I’d been away all day on a Tuesday and didn’t get a nap. I returned home just before 11PM and went straight to bed, but had to be up at 5AM on Wednesday morning to cook breakfast for a group of which I’ve become a part since retiring here. It meant a short night, followed by an intense drain on energy very early in the morning. Returning home at about 8, I was an absolute zombie for the rest of the morning, even lunching and beginning my daily nap( this time for 2 hours) before noon. 

I cannot recall what passed that morning OR that afternoon. Only that, if Char asked me for anything, she likely considered shooting me for non-satisfaction of request. 

 

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

Corona Virus Can Be Good For You

About 20 years ago we began putting money aside because we owned no real estate. We knew then that with retirement on the distant horizon, we needed to plan to buy a house when retirement time came. Rather than in a savings account at the bank, we invested in mutual funds and such, and were pleased to watch the original “chunk” grow by  over the years.  We’re not smart enough to do this ourselves, so we hired a “guy” at one of those companies that does this stuff to watch over us and our money. Approaching retirement, we naively assumed that we’d just cash out the investments and buy a home.

It didn’t turn out that way.  Our “guy” (who managed the investments) put together a package that involved raiding a retirement account that he DIDN’T supervise to get a big chunk of money. Certain severance payments we had received formed another big chunk of what went into buying a house, then he borrowed money “on margin” using our investments to guarantee repayment.  We cannot fault him. In fact, when we learned, in 2018, how easy it was to borrow money that way, we hit it up a couple times in 2019, once for upgrades on the house and once to pay a surprise tax bill on the money we’d taken from our pension to buy the house in the first place. 

But we have to pay interest on what we’ve borrowed, so the sooner the debt disappears, the better. We had originally assumed that it was as simple as selling assets that have appreciated, reaping the profits, and offsetting the debts.” We were wrong. Doing that will incur capital gains taxes. Instead, our “guy” now looks at our accounts regularly for things that have lost value. He sells, or “harvests” those losses, and pays down the loan with what he gets for them, and counts what we’ve lost against what we might owe in taxes next year.

In that way, the big dip in the stock market on February 24th was good for us. On the 25th we learned that some of our stuff took a real hit, so we sold, paid off debt, and did so in a manner that avoids a bunch of taxes.  It all seems upside down. Sometimes we think that we should have just stacked the cash under the mattress. But we can’t complain. We have a nice house, and more money than we owe. However it works out, we give thanks to God.

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

Overheard

It’s a common enough comedy trope that something “can’t be unseen”. It’s usually trotted out when one person narrating an experience wherein he or she saw something particularly embarrassing describes their anguish in not being able to erase a memory.  Sadly, this is not just a comedy trope, it is the reality of too many people who have encountered situations in life which trouble them for years afterward.

Though I’ve not seen anything that I wish to unsee, I did recently overhear something that I would rather unhear. I’d gone to my nearby public library to use a computer there that has software which I’m too cheap to buy for use at home. The library’s accessibility enables me to continue in my thrifty (cheapskate) ways. I was in the building for a couple hours. 

I had selected a carrel where I wouldn’t be regarded as crowding anyone’s space. I’ve no objection to someone sitting down next to me, but don’t know if anyone already there might object to me.  Across the aisle from me there was a man who was multitasking. While doing whatever he was busy at on the computer, he was holding a conversation on his phone with another person. The discussion seemed to be about disputes in the context of his romantic life. That he was willing to take his problems to a third party to discuss them may be commendable, but the rest of us in that part of the library didn’t need to hear them. Even when I put on the computer’s “over-the-ear” headphones, I could still hear him. 

What impressed me negatively was a single-syllable verb he used to stand for “be in a romantic relationship with”. Whether he was referring to the relationship the two of them shared, or about the possibility of his leaving this relationship and taking up with another partner, or of his girlfriend’s dumping him and taking up a romantic relationship with another man, it was always the same single-syllable verb. 

I’ve no doubt that, between them, there are several problems. I think that one part of the whole is vocabulary. In my own mind, and experience, there’s more to a romantic relationship with someone than can be implied by the word he chose. 

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

Culling the Library

When we visited Taiwan this past January we were able to see the fruition of many years of work and bother, the new library of Tainan Theological College. We couldn’t easily avoid the project during the final 3 years of our residence there. Noise, dust and ugliness accompany many construction projects. I can take NO credit for the project. None. But I did serve on the school’s “library committee” for a couple years before the project (the product of other committees) was put into action.

I recall a committee meeting at which the director of library services put forth the idea that the old facility was bursting with unneeded books and proposed culling the collection to get some relief. Culling is a job that ALL libraries undertake, if not continually, then periodically. The problem at Tainan was not that too many unused books had been purchased over the years, but that too many of the books on the shelves had been donated to the library, often from the collections of alumni who had, in pious phraseology, “gone on to greater glory”, and whose studies had been cleared out by widows or descendants. What those who opposed culling feared was that one of these descendants might visit and seek “the book my father used” that had been donated years or decades before. If that book were the only copy in the library’s holdings, it might well be on the shelf. But often the donated book was “copy 4, 6 or 12” and was no longer even assigned for reading or reference by any of the faculty.

My local library in Holland, MI is wonderful. If you want to check out books, DVDs or even some types of equipment, it’s either got it or can get it. I carry a card in my billfold.  But there’s also a tool library in my neighborhood, run by a non-profit. I’ve been a member almost since arriving here in 2018. This library is maintained by volunteers, and of late doesn’t even have office hours. Borrowing and return of items is run by appointment. It’s in a single-car garage, and has a good online catalog, http://3-sixty.org/hammertime/ , but had become rather messy of late. I joined the volunteers one morning last week, and in about 90 minutes we had put the place in order. 

Some of what was done involved culling. That wasn’t difficult when the library was holding three of anything big. What made it feel like the library in Taiwan, though, was a box of rather rusty saws which had come because somebody had downsized or moved out of a house into a retirement apartment. Those tools were “emotionally connected” to the neighborhood and the relationships that led to their being donated to the organization. 

Culling is more than a matter of space on the shelves or in the catalog. Sometimes it comes with relational peril.

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

 

Battery Dead

Returning from an adjunct teaching gig at a university 20 minutes’ drive north of Tainan one day, I stopped near home to get my favorite Taiwan food, a lunch-box. I parked in a “not exactly legal” place, but since I was standing in line only meters away, I could move the car if needed. Besides, it was only for a few minutes since I planned to take lunch home and eat it there. 

Bagged-up box lunch in hand, I jumped back behind the wheel and turned the key but nothing happened. The battery had given up its ghost when I started up after class. But God is good. There was a legal parking spot only a few feet in front of me. It was an easy push, then a short walk home, where I enjoyed my lunch and took a nap before springing into action for the afternoon. 

The mechanic who serviced the car and kept it on the road far beyond its usable life was a short walk away. I went there and reported the car’s condition and location. Then I walked to the car and within a few minutes a technician arrived on a motor scooter. He inspected the situation and said, “wait here.” He was soon back with a new battery and it was installed. He returned to the shop and I was right behind him. The battery was paid for and I was back in business.

A couple weeks back, the battery in our “Michigan Car” began to indicate the end of its own life. We had attended an even that took about 90 minutes, during which I had, unwisely, left the lights on. A jumpstart from friends got us out of that jam, and a few hours hooked to the battery charger in our own garage seemed to solve things. Three days later, though, in the middle of a longer set of errands, starting again failed. Another jump start and a longer stint on the charger seemed to take care of that. But, of course, this was not a permanent fix. On a Saturday morning, it wouldn’t crank. The charger was deployed once again, this time for almost 48 hours. No dice. 

Both of our previous jump starts had been provided by friends near to where the car failed to perform. But this time it was at home. I started running through the mental list of people who could help me start the thing so that I could get it to a parts store when I recalled, “I pay $50 per year for roadside service.”  A call, a little bit of information, and within ten minutes the guy was here. I went to the shop and had a battery within 30 more. Now things run fine.

The night before the car’s final failure, my wife, Char, had dreamed of going someplace and discovering that the car wouldn’t start upon her trying to come home. The next morning, the failure to start happened even before she LEFT.  That’s not exactly prophetic dreaming, but is close enough to be considered Delphic. I’m hoping she can dream about the stock market or the horse races next time.

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

 

Ship of Fools

About 10 years before retiring, I asked myself what I might want from the process. The answer was to “make new friends and do new things”. Last week I had lunch with one of those new friends. He’s about 15 years older than me, retired from the local college where he taught literature. Though he recently published a book, he seems to think of it as his last one, and cares not whether the publisher promotes its sale or not. He certainly is not inclined to do any marketing himself.

 

Our conversation wandered far and wide. Though our professional careers were different, our preparation for them had certain similarities, and our lives on college faculties (his for decades, mine merely for years) gave us many contact points.  At some time in the conversation I recommended a book to him, set within the English department at a minor state university. The book was about lots of different things, but the setting would have been familiar to him. 

Arriving home after lunch, I looked up the novel, and realized I’d given him the wrong title. Reflection on the topic and a note of correction I sent him reminded me of other “faculty novels” I’ve read over the years. Like a ship of fools, a contained environment within which characters bounce off of each other without hope of new input or escape until the end of the adventure, faculty novels have their delights, especially when one has served in a department or on a faculty. 

Here’s my list:  Straight Man by Richard Russo,  Moo by Jane Smiley,  Rookery Blues and Dean’s List by Jon Hassler.  None is exactly about faculty, any more than “ship of fools” books are about ships or murder-on-a-train thrillers about railroads. But each delights in its own wacky way.

 

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

Collections

 Clearing up after someone has moved, or moved on, is similar to downsizing in preparation to move along. We did a lot of that in the summer of 2018 as we packed out of Taiwan on the way to new lives in America. One of our commendable-but-difficult-to-manage habits has to do with books, which we acquire, read, then put onto a shelf.  Over the decades in Taiwan we’d often given away hundreds at a time (every few years there were that many in surplus). We had cabinets with about 80 feet of shelf space, but from time to time had to double stack things. It was not so much that we planned to re-read each book as that we were reluctant to give any of them up.

When one of our children was about 3, the idea of having “collections” was appealing. After finishing a milkshake, the straw became part of “my collection”.  These collections were left out on tabletops and other surfaces to keep them active and in mind. If any should be put into a drawer or cabinet, it would be forgotten until serious cleanout time, months or years later. 

There are artists who love to find these caches of forgotten items and turn them into various collage pieces in which coherence and whimsy can both be found. I’m not that sort of artist (if indeed, “artist” I am). Collections have become more interesting to me lately, though. In the boxes we brought to Michigan from Taiwan there were 3 or 4 hard-disks and lots of floppies. These contain letters I wrote long ago, hymns I composed, articles I produced for faculty convocations at the schools where I taught, and (ugh) the texts of sermons I had preached, thinking myself clever. There are surely enough words in there to amass into a book. But books are not merely collections of words.

Unlike an artist’s collage or a mosaic that combines pieces and brings delight, a collection of my prose would, if the paper and ink were wasted thereupon, bring stupor. It’s value would be found in its soporific qualities. 

Even a rock collection can be recycled into the stones that go into the concrete of a driveway. 

Maybe there’s a use for my life’s work in a similar location.

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

Something Went Right, Something Went Wrong

In January I went to Taiwan to participate in the election. Polls opened at 8AM and closed at 4PM. Three elections were held that day, one for president, one for a district parliamentarian, and a third for “party preference” to divide up 34 of the 113 places in the parliament between political parties proportionally.. Each voter received 3 paper ballots. (A few, who had been citizens for fewer than 6 months, ineligible to vote for president, only received two ballots.)

Fourteen million voters turned out. That means upward of 42 million pieces of paper had to be extracted from ballot boxes, unfolded, and the votes marked upon them tallied. No machines were involved. Vote counting was in the same rooms where votes were cast, under the view of anyone who wanted to witness it, and in many places, under the glare of television lights. The votes were all counted and certified within 6 hours. Something, in fact EVERYTHING, went right.

 

In February one state in the USA held a contest in which people interested in having a say about whom the Democratic party will nominate as its presidential candidate for the upcoming presidential election could cast votes. It was a “two-round” event. People whose preferred candidate did not reach an agreed upon threshold in the first round could vote for someone else in the second. Voting was done by standing in groups, and “heads” were counted, not ballots.  About 175,000 people turned up. Between the first and second rounds, some departed, but not all that many. Three days later, the results were still unclear. Some things, in fact, MANY things, went awry.

 

Iowa is four times the size of Taiwan, and though not flat as a billiard table, still has no mountains and few, if any, islands. Taiwan is small, mountainous and has many offshore islands. 

The results from Iowa’s 1,777 individual caucus sites had to be communicated to the party headquarters electronically. 

 

With time on my hands, I’ve applied to be an election worker in the State of Michigan. If I’m hired, I’ll be at a poll station somewhere in my local city when votes are cast in a future election or two.  I’m hoping to emulate the goodness of Taiwan as I do so.

 

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

The Wave

In a stadium, “the wave” is achieved when successive groups of spectators briefly stand, yell and raise their arms, then immediately return to their seated position. Sports historians have traced the maneuver’s first recorded occurrence to Oakland, California during a baseball playoff game against a team the New York on October 15, 1981.  

But that’s not today’s topic. The wave on my mind is the kind made by a pedestrian to the operator of a motor vehicle or bicycle at an intersection to indicate “you go first” or “hold on there, buddy”. One of the busy avenues along which I walk to various places has a few traffic lights and many cross streets controlled by stop signs. When a driver has waited at a stop sign for a break in traffic, it’s rather impolite for a pedestrian, who HAS the right of way, to snatch the occasional gap. However, it’s both impolite and illegal for a driver to zoom out in front of someone on foot. Waves can help alleviate confusion and smooth traffic flow.

I found myself waving at a couple drivers last week, either because they’d waved me through ahead of them (and I was acknowledging or thanking them), or because I was offering them the first chance. The “wave back to acknowledge or thank” is just, flat, polite. It matters not if it comes as a nod, a “military salute”, a touch of hat brim or a full bow. It produces good feelings.

Things like “how to wave” differ with cultures and contexts. “Come hither”, as I learned it growing up in Southern California, was done with the palm upward and the  index finger crooked. When given initial orientation to Taiwan I was taught not to do that. Such a gesture, I was told, is used for animals. The proper gesture indicating that a person should draw near is to have the palm of the hand facing down and using four fingers, as if one were wearing a mitten.

Having been taught, and therefore “knowing”, I regularly forgot and offended. Walking in Taiwan and crossing streets, whether one has the right of way or not, whether one is on foot, wheelchair, bicycle or skateboard, is governed (no matter WHAT the law might say)  by an ancient principle that “the bigger vehicle has the right of way.” Waves are sometimes used, but generally these are initiated by the smaller indicating to the larger “you first.” That they are not returned indicates “of course I do.”  

Moving between cultures can be confusing and hazardous. But you’ve got to love them all. 

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

A Special LIght

We had breakfast with some relatives a week after we returned from a January trip to Taiwan. Part of the discussion touched on the difficulty of getting through jet-lag. We’d been in North America for 6 nights and were still waking in the VERY wee hours of the morning. One person at the table mentioned using one of those “special lights” that folks north of the Arctic Circle have to overcome the winter blues.  Another person at the table asked, “What kind of special light?”

The very term “special light” threw me back 35 years, to when I’d often walk my then 3-year-old daughter home from kindergarten in Kaohsiung. She attended at a church-run facility located on a major intersection. (Population changes closed the place in the 90s, but the church remains. It rebuilt the space and rents out the ground floor now to a 7-Eleven store. My kids both rode down the slide at about the place where coffee is served now). 

Anyway, along Wu-fu Road on our walk home there was a small OB/GYN clinic. Right inside the front door was the big window where you could look at the babies in baskets, so we’d sometimes stop there for a peek. One day I pointed out a baby in a specially lit glass box. (I’ve since learned to call this a “bili light.”)  When we got home, she lectured her mother about the baby under the “special light”. The discussion last Tuesday took me back to that moment.

While in Kaohsiung the week after the presidential election in January we walked along that block of Wu-fu Road. The church at one end of the block is still there, as is the bank at the other. Everything in between is high rise. The OB/GYN clinic is long gone. The babies have all grown up. May they all shine with special light.

 

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