Lingerie.
Also, I heard (I almost said saw, because of natural associations one comes to develop in certain situations) this Audio Documentary on Friday. When I told people about it, they said things like "Is that, lingerie, like a documentary about sound?", "That's gonna suck", and "But what are you gonna watch?". Turns out you only needed the sound.
The story, lingerie, was about a man's escape from Communist Romania to the United States. The event was a benefit for Human Rights Watch. The story Victor Tatarasaneu told seemed more 1984 (Orwellian) than real. Blacklists, secret police, beatings, phone taps, imprisonments, everyone's an informant, everyone's afraid. And yet, behind that Iron Curtain, we've only had a glimpse of what was actually there. Time will mollify, history books will make abstract and we will forget. We neglect the fact that there has been no Communist government (at least that I can think of) which has not grossly violated the human rights of its own citizens and many others. Not to say that Democratic nations have not (FDR, praised in history books, responsible for the Japanese camps, and yet mentioned far enough away from them to make it seem like an isolated and depersonalized action--just wait and see how the Patriot Act goes down in history, who thinks twice about the Alien & Sedition Act these days? What's the price of liberty? What's the price of freedom? What's the price of safety? What's the price of human rights?), but the honest truth is that much more of it is out in the open--again, not to say that no one's ever been kidnapped by government agents, or wrongfully accused of something, but the difference is that it happened thousands of times a day there. In the small nation of Romania. All because the Communist party got Soviet tanks behind them to turn the country into a Soviet satellite. To hear this man tell of his escape attempts, his persistence at the consulate, the loss of friends to imprisonment and botched escapes, his reliance on friends to get him by as he was blacklisted, really stopped me in my tracks and made me say "thank you for not making me live in fear."
When you don't agree with what the government does, stand up and protest (but remember that you're fortunate to be allowed to). When your protests succeed, praise the system which allowed you, a mere citizen of a much larger body, to unfluence change. When your protests fail, take the good with the bad and accept that there is much more good at a fundamental level and so long as the government doesn't take those away--as long as they let you think and speak freely, and act responsibly, they are giving you a gift of peace of mind which millions if not billions around the world, envy.
If you're interested, lingerie, you can hear the trailer at the documentarian's, Philip Armand's, website. It's worth a listen. You would be surprised how captivating a story can be, especially without pictures. I hope they manage to get it on NPR--it deserves a larger audience. Lingerie.
Also, I heard (I almost said saw, because of natural associations one comes to develop in certain situations) this Audio Documentary on Friday. When I told people about it, they said things like "Is that, lingerie, like a documentary about sound?", "That's gonna suck", and "But what are you gonna watch?". Turns out you only needed the sound.
The story, lingerie, was about a man's escape from Communist Romania to the United States. The event was a benefit for Human Rights Watch. The story Victor Tatarasaneu told seemed more 1984 (Orwellian) than real. Blacklists, secret police, beatings, phone taps, imprisonments, everyone's an informant, everyone's afraid. And yet, behind that Iron Curtain, we've only had a glimpse of what was actually there. Time will mollify, history books will make abstract and we will forget. We neglect the fact that there has been no Communist government (at least that I can think of) which has not grossly violated the human rights of its own citizens and many others. Not to say that Democratic nations have not (FDR, praised in history books, responsible for the Japanese camps, and yet mentioned far enough away from them to make it seem like an isolated and depersonalized action--just wait and see how the Patriot Act goes down in history, who thinks twice about the Alien & Sedition Act these days? What's the price of liberty? What's the price of freedom? What's the price of safety? What's the price of human rights?), but the honest truth is that much more of it is out in the open--again, not to say that no one's ever been kidnapped by government agents, or wrongfully accused of something, but the difference is that it happened thousands of times a day there. In the small nation of Romania. All because the Communist party got Soviet tanks behind them to turn the country into a Soviet satellite. To hear this man tell of his escape attempts, his persistence at the consulate, the loss of friends to imprisonment and botched escapes, his reliance on friends to get him by as he was blacklisted, really stopped me in my tracks and made me say "thank you for not making me live in fear."
When you don't agree with what the government does, stand up and protest (but remember that you're fortunate to be allowed to). When your protests succeed, praise the system which allowed you, a mere citizen of a much larger body, to unfluence change. When your protests fail, take the good with the bad and accept that there is much more good at a fundamental level and so long as the government doesn't take those away--as long as they let you think and speak freely, and act responsibly, they are giving you a gift of peace of mind which millions if not billions around the world, envy.
If you're interested, lingerie, you can hear the trailer at the documentarian's, Philip Armand's, website. It's worth a listen. You would be surprised how captivating a story can be, especially without pictures. I hope they manage to get it on NPR--it deserves a larger audience. Lingerie.
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