It's Not a Tumor

My wife has developed a shocking appendage on her left hand. It is red, rectangular, and about the size of the hand itself. There is no cure for this curious swelling, no surgery presently available for removal of the growth, and no medicine known that might shrink or eradicate the tumour -- for the appendage of which I’m speaking is not corporeal, but is composed of manmade elements, plastic, rubber, circuitry, a venous system of tiny wires, and God knows what else. The appendage is a Blackberry phone.

I thought at first that it was a temporary inflammation and that it would surely fall away of its own accord in due time, like a wart or a Gila monster, but the thing has persisted now for over a year and I’m resigned, therefore, toward accepting the malady, my only option being to grow accustomed to the presence of the eternal blemish as one might do with a failed tattoo or a gerbil-sized mole. Nobody’s perfect, right? We are all plagued by these little flaws, and can certainly repress our regret for the substandard part in favour of the comely whole.

I must add, however, that it would certainly assist in my efforts to discount the flaw if she would stop her endless fiddling with the thing, for this constant attention to the unlovely part merely heightens my own awareness of the same, bringing it ever before my otherwise compassionate eyes at all times of the day and night, throughout every activity and mutual venture, while eating, while sleeping, while walking, while sitting, while watching a movie or engaging in foreplay. Yes, and worse.

The fact is, she adores her foreign appendage. She caresses it, pokes at it, laughs at it and talks to it, engrossed in its language of beeps and bells. I’ve not seen such fascination since the days when my 3-month old son used to gaze and drool in delight at the mobile that danced above his crib.

Whatever else may be said of the Blackberry (and the I-Phone, and other reduplicating malignancies), it is certain that this gadget has effected and will continue to effect far reaching changes at the core of every society it has infected. Technology is only the tip of the iceberg. In the same way that the automobile is more than just a machine used to convey a person from point A to point B, the Blackberry is a personal accessory, a form of jewellery, a status symbol, a thing of envy and desire for which people will beg and steal, even trample if need be. It simply must be possessed.

Moreover, the Blackberry has entirely altered the dynamics of the male-female relationship. In former days it was expected that a man would talk to his wife or girlfriend at dinner or drinks or through the course of a romantic stroll and so on. Indeed, I used to make little lists of things to say in advance of a date so as not to appear boring or disinterested, and would peek at my list at opportune moments in order to refresh the conversation and appear lively and engaged.

Well, those days are gone, and man’s burden has been considerably lightened, thanks to the incomparable charm and appeal of the cell phone. Try talking to your wife now, when she’s busy at poking and stroking and caressing her handset. I tell you, you can talk to the air till you’re blue in the face -- or at least until she tells you to shut up because you’re interrupting the flow of her digital interactions. Take a look around next time you go out for a meal. How many women are talking to their mates? How many are fixated on their Blackberry phones?

I recall a television commercial that ran in America some few years ago. The commercial went something like this: A man is sitting in his chair watching TV while his wife prepares to go out somewhere. The wife pops in and out of the room to pose various questions to her otherwise oblivious husband.

“Is that what you’re going to wear tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you remember to buy the milk today?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Does this dress make me look fat.”

“Uh-huh.”

Well, the shoe is now on the other foot, men. Chances are that you will no longer hear things like “You don’t talk to me anymore,” or “You don’t love me anymore,” or “You don’t even know what I wore today.” Nope, from here on out it’s “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

Who knew during all these eons of inter-relational challenges that all it would take to truly please a woman was a song of beeps and buzzes and clucks? I daresay the modern home is quieter now, free as it is of the many former gripes and grievances that otherwise required time and attention. One should be content, I suppose. One should count his blessings (or his lucky stars).

And yet I can’t help but feel that something’s missing. That something’s been stolen away. And I kind of miss talking to my wife now and then. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know what I wore today.

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Every Curtain That Rises Must Fall

I can’t stand grade school plays. I know it sounds mean and un-parent-like, but there you have it. At least I’m honest -- although honesty itself may as well have saved its breath for all the difference it has ever made where my attendance at these tedious, interminable events is concerned. I don’t think that I’m alone either. I would bet that fully 70 percent of otherwise decent parents detest these theatrical extravaganzas in the same way that they detest receiving a summons for jury duty in the mail, and carefully maintain therefore an airtight reason for excusal.

Take my wife for instance (noting that I resist the Rodney Dangerfield punch line). She cannot possibly attend the play because she works. Overtime, if necessary. Feigning painful disappointment, she tells the boy that she cannot come, but assures him that Dad will be there -- which is a thing meant not so much for his consumption as for mine.

This season’s dramatic offering involves a presentation of favourite fairy tales and fantasies, and my son’s class has chosen The Wizard of Oz. I know this in advance because he has mentioned just 22 hours before the rise of the curtain that he needs a Tin Man costume. From this alone one gleans an appreciation of the careful effort and preparation that go into these programs, along with a pretty sure estimation of what one has gotten oneself into.

So I spend the eve of the big show shopping for tin man stuff. A funnel for his hat, silver spray paint, long gloves to cover the arms, and so on. Try explaining these needs to shop clerks who speak not a word of English. Try explaining that you’re turning your son into a tin man.

On the big day I arrive at 9 a.m. sharp, for despite my preceding efforts to pin down the hour in which my son will actually be on stage, the teachers have stubbornly refused to divulge this information. If they have to sit through it, so do we. I am hoping of course that my son’s performance will be first in line, allowing an early escape, but suspect, given previous experience, that they will save the best for last. With resignation therefore, I insert myself between the white-bloused shoulders of two proud mothers in the second row to the last, where my heavy sighs and occasional snoring will be a nuisance to as few people as possible. Teachers in the meantime bustle officiously about, as grave as ushers at a joint session of Congress.

The first play involves the three pigs and the big bad wolf. I can’t really hear what the children are saying, but I know the story pretty well. For this reason I cannot help but wonder why a story that features three pigs and one wolf has nonetheless required the presence of fifty-two children on the stage. Why, moreover, is the wolf wearing orange pyjamas?

Auditory problems have been ironed out by the time the next skit starts by the introduction of five additional microphones turned to full volume. Now, it can be pretty generally agreed upon that no Indonesian should be given a microphone to begin with, but to give one to a child is a sin pure and simple. Volume at a certain point ceases to clarify and begins merely to loudly obscure. Such was the case this day, wherein all that was uttered by the little thespians was turned to an ear-piercing quacking sound, which itself was further obfuscated by the raised voices of all the proud mothers who had soon tired of the tedious program and turned to one another for endless gossip and gab.

I couldn’t hear the title of the next play, but I think it might have been Titus Andronicus. Either that or Alice in Wonderland. I can almost swear that at one point I heard one of the tykes exclaim “These words are razors to my wounded heart!”, but then later on I found myself fairly convinced that another had said “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” Ultimately this theatrical selection wrapped up with a dance performance to the tuneful, albeit rather pointless lyrics of Dynamite, by Taio Cruz.

Three hours into the 90 minute program I wake with a start and push myself straight in my chair. I‘m hot, sore, diaphoretic, short of breath, and I swear privately to every god I can think of that I will never again attend one of these functions, even if I have to drink poison. Blaring across the stage is what appears to be a deadly battle between Egyptian-looking soldiers with Jell-O moulds on their heads. Martial trumpets and drums stab to the inner ear while countless children die horribly on the points of wooden spears, and are afterwards ministered to by long-haired girls in flowing white dresses. Which is something I found rather touching.

At last count, as far as I had been aware, there were six grades in my son’s school; and yet it seems clear that six or seven had been added on top of these, for as soon as one set of children marched off the stage, another set marched on, with no end in sight. I see the three bears, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Hanzel and Gretel, witches and magicians, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. How much of this was real and how much the stuff of troubled dream, I cannot say. All I know is that at some point a kind member of the exiting audience woke me, and that I was able at long last to rise to my feet and to utter my own heroic, well practiced line:

“Free at last, free at last. I thank God I’m free at last.”

Who'll Stop the Rain?

My wife doesn’t like the rain. She finds it to be both wet and inconvenient. It is especially wet and inconvenient when ones only available mode of transportation is a motorbike. And I will concede that much. Clearly, having to drive a motorbike through Bali’s torrential rains -- or having to be conveyed upon the back of one, which is the situation in her case -- is distinctly less than pleasant. One might compare it to going through a carwash with the top down, or climbing into the bathtub fully dressed. I’ve purchased for her one of these long rain jackets of course, but even these do not completely protect the clothing and body from the effects of full submersion.

When I first came to Bali, two Februarys ago, I saw but little rain throughout the ensuing year, and surmised therefore that rainfall in Bali was rare and brief. I went swimming nearly every day in the sea, baked my exterior as brown as pumpernickel -- micro-waved really, for the effect was that swift -- and then dipped my body anon to the cooling surf, and on doing so emitted, I believe, a satisfied hiss as the water touched my superheated skin. I took dozens of photos, mostly of the sun, and sent these back home along with happy declarations to the effect that I had found, at long last, paradise.

Two years down the road it seems to have been raining since November 1, 2011, and I’m becoming damnably sick of the stuff. In order to appreciate the depth of my disenchantment it will be helpful for the reader to know that I was born and spent 55 years in the State of Oregon, well known for its rainy season of about 11-½ month’s duration. Native Oregonians, as the old saying goes, are born with webbed feet, like a duck’s. In fact, one of our University football teams is known as the Oregon Ducks. We are also known as the Beaver State, although any beavers that may have once existed there have long since been turned into hats and shawls. In any case, I had, when I came to Bali, fifty-five years of rain under my belt, which seemed more than ample for any one lifetime.

But what is my wife’s excuse? Indonesian by birth, she grew up in Jakarta, then worked in Bali, then moved to Arizona (a State which is hotter than all the islands of Indonesia put together), and experienced after that a mere eight years of immersion in the giant puddle otherwise known as the Pacific Northwest. What does she have to complain about? What are a mere eight years compared to fifty-five?

Ah, but complain she does. Maybe it’s because her years in Indonesia conditioned her toward the expectation that the sun ought sometimes to shine. Maybe it’s just because she’s a woman and therefore cannot help complaining. It occurs to me just now that my mother also complained about the rain -- and she surely should have known better, having endured it from the day of her birth in 1926.

Everybody talks about the weather, as Mark Twain observed, but nobody does anything about it.

And yet I feel this same expectation in myself. Just yesterday morning, for instance, when the time had come to drive my wife to work, it started to rain -- not just to sprinkle, mind you, but to piss down, in sheets, in blankets, in duvet covers. This is the habit of the weather in Bali. It has been carefully calibrated by the gods of the island to coincide with my wife’s coming and going.

As I waited for her in the driveway, I noted her to briefly poke her head out the doorway, and then pull it back again and disappear within. After a time I came to see what had become of her, and found her slumped dolefully upon the couch, feet hanging over the edge like a child’s.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Won’t you be late for work?”

“I can’t take this,” she answered. “Now I need to roll up my pants, or change to shorts. And what about my shoes? My shoes will get wet. One million rupiah, turned to garbage.”

“But I think it’s stopping now, Honey.” I returned to the porch, gazed beseechingly at the clouds. “I think we have a window here. Let’s go while we can, ya?”

Morosely, she mounted the bike and we started out, steering clear of puddles and lakes and streams and reservoirs.

By the time we reached the intersection with the Bypass, the rain had started again, and with renewed vigour at that. We stopped, opened the seat, and retrieved our rain jackets. She threw her helmet.

“What?” I said, running after the thing.

“I’m not happy,” she said.

“Well then . . . What?”

“Well then, DO SOMETHING!”

I considered suggesting she try tapping her heels together three times and saying “There’s no place like home,” but then thought better of it. There was really nothing to do but forge on, and so we did. In silence. Awful, dreadful, deafening silence.

Now the reason I’m telling you all this is to advertise my wife’s need of a car, along with our coincident lack of funding for the same. To that end, if there is anyone out there who wants to sell one cheaply, or better yet simply gift a car, please write to the e-mail below. Or simply park the thing in front of my house. The house I rent, I mean. I cannot, as I’ve said, offer money, but I am willing to trade my soul. It’s not a perfect soul, and has its share of dints and scrapes, but it’s still in usable condition.

Careful What You Wish For

“I like babies,” the waitress said. “I like them a lot. I want to have the baby but I don’t want to have the husband.”

I told her that I was sure somebody would be happy to oblige; and, as she was a comely young maid, I forwarded myself as a possible candidate.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I tried to explain my passing attempt at humour, but the more I explained it, the more inexplicable it became. This form of humour often fails to translate to the Indonesian sensibility. A friend of mine, an Englishman, once declared that the Indonesian people have no sense of humour at all. Of course that’s not true. They do have a sense of humour. It simply tends more toward the physical, as when someone falls off a ladder or slips in the mud. It’s a Jerry Lewis, Three Stooges, Chevy Chase sort of humour, and, providing that the victim is not seriously injured, these sorts of accidents are generally considered hilarious. But one does best to steer away from the understated style of jest, and most certainly so where some nuance of language is involved.

“Bercanda kok,” I said. “It’s just a joke.” I waved the thing away, pesky fly that it had become, and started over again. “Just have the baby then, and don’t bother with the husband.”

“But how can I have the baby without the husband?”

Hmm. This looked like another slippery slope, and we’d hardly gotten started. Was I to give a birds and bees lecture?

Happily, her next comments made this unnecessary.

“Here in Bali you must have the marriage. If you have the baby, you get the husband; and if you have the husband, you get the baby. Here in Bali is not like America. In America this is possible because everything is possible.”

“You don’t say! Well that’s good news indeed. I think I’ll go back.”

“When do you leave?”

Onward, onward.

Of course, the young woman is quite correct. In Bali the family unit remains at the centre of society and culture. It is the very hub of life, from which the entire network of daily existence extends. It is the glue that holds the world together, and the world itself a garment sewn whole with the thread of relationship and community. To transgress against the tried and true pattern must compromise the integrity of life and will surely bring consequences both instant and enduring.

And then we have America, where all things are possible, of both the sacred and profane. Sadly, she is quite right on that score as well. We’ve been there, done that, and have now no idea where we’ve arrived. Strangers in a strange land. It’s a confusion of existence that we like to call freedom.

And yet the parameters of morality by which I was formed are not unlike those which infuse the fabric of life in Bali, such that I find myself continually struck anew by the irony of having somehow come home. I return, as it were, from a shattered land to find old sureties reconstituted, and I find myself in many ways more comfortable in this foreign place than in that country of my birth which lies on the other side of the world.

I tell the waitress that America was once like Bali, but she doesn’t believe me. It spoils her dreams. In America there is snow, she says. And Hollywood, and Broadway, and Caesar’s Palace. In America everyone is rich, and because they are rich, they do as they like. They will not believe that I, an American, am not rich. I’ve tried to tell them many times, but they only laugh. I have said that I am as poor as the people themselves, but they will not believe. It spoils their dreams. You’ve just ordered a large Bintang, they will say. And so of course I am rich.

In America babies are had without men. They are had without husbands or fathers or families. Mama’s baby daddy, we say. And significant other. And birth parent. And surrogate donor. The very notion of family is subject to interpretation. We don’t let tradition or moralities, or even love in the common sense, get in the way.

Facetiousness seems suddenly not so funny. I care for the girl, her choices, her future, her family, her island, her country, her baby. I want to explain to this woman what we have learned and know. I want to tell her where we’ve come from and where we are. I want to tell her about the loneliness and despair that lies on the other side of rebellion. I want to warn her not to forget the father. But I cannot do so. My grasp of Indonesian falls far short of the task.

It seems she will have to find out for herself.

Today's Weather -- Scattered Frogs?

There are a lot of frogs in Bali. It’s the next thing to a Biblical plague. Not that I have anything against frogs, or any intention of casting insult upon their kind. I employ the Biblical reference only to convey the idea of a great multitude, and also to suggest that they may be falling from the sky. There’s nothing wrong with falling from the sky either, if they prefer it. The point is that there are a lot of them, no matter where they come from -- and there seem to be more than ever during this present rainy season. 
I take this coincidence of frogs and rain to be pertinent as well, and both causative and complimentary in some essential way. It may be, in other words, that the rain causes these amphibians to spring forth in abundance at the proper season, like crocuses or chrysanthemums, providing as it does a nurturing soil and a productive earth; or it may also be that they have actually been somehow seeded in the clouds and come pouring down admixed with the island’s famous torrents of rain. In support of the latter theory I advance the notion that a significant portion of what hits my helmet whilst I’m riding in a rain storm seems quite clearly of a heavier composition than mere water. There is the constant tapping sound that we associate with raindrops, and then there is the interspersed THUMP, which cannot be rain, but must be a foreign object of some kind. A frog, perhaps.

Such happenings, though tending toward the extraordinary, are not unheard of. In 1873, for instance, Kansas City, Missouri was deluged by frogs dropping from the heavens during a violent storm. Again, in July of 1901, Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with a squall of frogs and toads. After these amphibian rains let up, a variety of frog species littered the earth, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks.

The citizens of Naphlion, a city in southern Greece, were surprised one morning in May, 1981, when they awoke to find small green frogs falling from the sky. Weighing just a few ounces each, the frogs landed in trees and plopped into the streets. The Greek Meteorological Institute surmised they had been picked by a strong wind. It must have been a very strong wind indeed, as the species of frog so fallen was native to North Africa.

As mentioned in the Grecian version of this event, the favourite explanation of science for the phenomenon is that of the freak tornado or typhoon, which, as we are told, whisks up all the frogs in one place and sets them down in quite another (preferring, apparently, to keep the community intact rather than scatter its members far and wide; and preferring also to transport frogs rather than parking meters, trash cans, tricycles or children). That this miraculous accident could have happened numerous times in disparate locales is surely as marvellous as the frogs themselves. Or, as my son, an adolescent at the time, once said, “When people hear about things that don’t make sense, they make up explanations just as dumb, and then straightaway forget it ever happened.” From the mouths of babes? Well, I reckon that’s the ultimate point of science here. When in doubt, blame it on a weather balloon, or some reasonable facsimile.

Perplexing as well is the fact that I often find these frogs, having once by whatever method descended or sprung forth, sitting on my front porch. I cannot for the life of me explain how they got there. Two steps must first be ascended to get from ground level to the front door. The height of the first step is one foot. The height of the second is 7 inches. Each frog that I have found at the door has been no taller than a thimble. I cannot believe, and I do not believe, that such a diminutive creature could have leaped a full foot in the air, nor 7 inches either -- and yet here the critter sits, 19 inches all told from the ground! It is quite impossible, you see, and leads naturally back to the theory of a decent from the sky.

I will say again that I have nothing whatsoever against frogs. Many are the boyhood days I can remember when my friends and I would chase and snatch frogs from the shallow waters of the high mountain lakes we so loved. Buckets of them we would collect, and salamanders and mud-dogs -- just to see how many there were in our world -- and then count them, and release them and watch them go. Strangely, they have all but disappeared from those lakes in the modern day. Scientists say it has something to do with climate change. For my own part, I suspect that they were picked up by a freak storm and deposited here in Bali. So it happens that I am always glad to see these old friends at my door, here on the other side of the world. If you ask me, these unassuming creatures have suffered unfairly ever since the times of scripture, wherein the Lord God Himself is recorded to have said “I will smite your whole territory with frogs.” If He didn’t like them, why’d He make them in the first place? No, as far I can see, they do no harm. I just wish they could be a bit less baffling in their ways.

Is This Really the End?

Newspaper writers and editors -- and especially copy editors (an inimical breed of their own) -- are a curmudgeonly, bitterly sardonic sort of creature, or at least I found them so during my short stint at newspaper work in the late 1970’s. I think this is simply because they are exposed to entirely too much “news,” and because no news is new news, nor is it very often news at all, but merely regurgitate matter that has already been around the block a few times. In short, it is the same news, re-masticated, re-digested and reproduced. It is like a daily, monthly, yearly diet of rice (something we know about here in Bali). You can throw in some colour, you can add a dash of texture, you can mix in a chicken or a pig or a pineapple, and give it a kick with a dollop of sambal, but ultimately and essentially it is still only rice, and rice, and more rice. It’s there, it happens, we consume and digest it -- and then it’s there all over again.

This is not the fault of the newspaper itself, or of its writers, editors and copy editors. It is the fault of . . . well, of the news. It bears such a strong resemblance to itself, you know? There is nothing new under the sun, Solomon said. What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again.

Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

The young, blissfully callow reporter will take a bit of monotony and think it the most marvellous thing. In a passion, in a fever, he does his research, he writes -- and when he gives his masterpiece of reporting to the editor, the editor sighs and grumbles and asks whether the piece can’t be given a twist of some kind. Can you make it sound like something new?

But of course he can’t, because it’s not. His article has already been written by every reporter who formerly sat at his desk.

It is because of this general malaise then, along with a coexistent hunger that will not relent -- for something fresh, untold, unprecedented -- that we have waited with bated breath on the arrival of 2012 and its promise of bringing along the end of the world as we know it. Now that would be news!

We used to joke at the paper, when someone was ill or gone away on vacation, that the world might end in the meantime, and he will have missed the story of the century. But now it’s no longer a joke -- for we are told by the ancient calendar of the Mayans, surely as wise and noble a source as one can find -- that the heavens and earth will surely pass away by December 21^st of the year.

Of course we have heard similar predictions in the past; most recently, for instance, from Christian broadcaster, Harold Camping, who had slated the end first for May and then for October 2011. In case you weren’t paying attention (or have been sick or on vacation), this did not happen. Nor did it end back in 1989, when aliens were to come, and then Christ as well, and all true believers would rise on clouds of glory in heaven. Presumably, newspaper writers would have been left behind to record the event, collect interviews, and such-like. My girlfriend at the time believed this so fervently that she called me at midnight to say goodbye. Again, you will be aware by now that the prediction was premature.

In fact, there have been numerous predictions of doomsday among Christians, from the apostle Paul to the present day. But here is something different, unused, unworn -- the sacred word of the ancient Mayans. What else could add such authenticity to a prophecy than the mystery of the long-lost, primordial knowledge of a dead and buried civilization? What had they to gain by lying? And what have we to lose in believing?

American author Walker Percy once surmised that modern human beings are psychologically in need of a fairly certain faith in an impending doomsday. Under this condition, life is bearable. The drudgery, the struggle, the sadness and desperation are tempered and softened by the thought that tomorrow it might all end, not only for oneself (that, after all, is guaranteed), but communally and for all existence. The “bomb,” therefore, supplied hope for decades. No matter how hard life became, there was still hope of an escape, for tomorrow might well bring nuclear Armageddon.

Smile though your heart is aching, smile even though it’s breaking.

But then the cold war ended, and we had to look for hope elsewhere; and elsewhere was inward, and inward was spiritual, and spiritual turned extremist and extremist turned savage, so that we found ourselves ultimately in the shoes of mad Colonel Kurtz from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

How many times has the world been on the brink of extinction, only ultimately to disappoint? Already there are a number of spoilsports out there doing their best to refute the sacred promise. They say that the Mayans made no such prediction. They say that the hieroglyphics have been misread. They say that it’s all a ridiculous sham.

Well they may be right. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of our mutual demise may prove greatly exaggerated. Nonetheless, I’m going to stick with the Mayans for the time being, and right up to December 21^st. I figure they are as deserving of the chance to be right as anyone else has been. And besides that, it makes me feel safe, somehow.

Looking Back to the Present Day

In his latest novel, 11/22/63, author Stephen King wonders what might have happened had John F. Kennedy been spared assassination at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald and lived to serve out the term or his Presidency. For myself, I wonder why we always use Oswald’s full name. Is there another Lee Oswald we might confuse him with, such that the middle name, Harvey, must always be included? It’s a small point, but a point of interest to me -- of more interest, actually, than the plot of this tedious novel turned out to be.

Nonetheless, the book got me to thinking. What if there had never been a John Kennedy, or anyone like a John Kennedy? What if Kennedy had never existed, and therefore never stepped forward to lead the nation through those critical times during the early 1960s? What would our society be like now had our government and its leadership been devoid of moral integrity, courage, conviction, and a commensurate will to implement the values of the majority? What if Kennedy had bowed to a small though loud fraction of society out of fear of offending, or of losing votes, or of confrontation, the spectre of trouble? What would America look like now?

It would look like Bogor, in Java. It would look like Ambon, Aceh, Sulawesi. In short, it would look like Indonesia.

In Aceh dozens of “punks” were arrested by regular and Shariah police. They had committed no crime, other than the crime of being different. Their heads were shaved, their clothes were confiscated, and the punks were then taken to the Aceh State police school for “re-education.” Re-education? Hmm. Where did we last hear that sort of thing? From Nazi Germany? The Khmer Rouge?

In Java several members of the Ahmadiyah sect, considered heretical by mainstream believers, were murdered by equally heretical extremists. The perpetrators of this crime received prison sentences of 3 to 6 months, while one Ahmadiyah sect member who sought to defend himself received several years. Why was nothing done? Why was justice not served?

Once upon a time in America, and, as fate would fortunately have it, during Kennedy’s presidency, a man named George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, sought to defy the law of the land and the will of the majority, not to mention the direct order of the President, by barring a black student from registering at the University of Alabama. Wallace said that the people of the State of Alabama expected it of him. And in fact, some of them no doubt did. The white ones, anyway. Wallace himself went to the front steps of the University, inspiring a mob to do the same, all for the purpose of upholding a social convention of intolerance and bigotry sewn deep in the Southern soul, and yet foreign, even despicable to the wide majority of Americans.

Sound familiar? Well it should. For here in Bogor, Java we have a mayor who stubbornly refuses to return to the Yasmin Christian church its house of worship -- this despite a Supreme Court decision ordering him to immediately do so. Here we have a mayor, not unlike Governor Wallace, who proudly discounts the will of the majority, not to mention the central tenants of Pacasila behind the Indonesian government, in favour of the loud but few -- those extremist Muslims who gather every Sunday at the Yasmin site to shout slogans, raise fists and tote placards as if they had nothing better to do with their time and energy. It’s ironic, given that Islam shares many of the same beliefs with Christianity -- the belief in Jesus as a great prophet, that he was born of a virgin, that he did great works, performed healings and miracles, and that he was raised to God’s side in heaven, to return one day. Do they even know the foundations of their faith, these people? Or are they victims merely of the same sort of social intolerance and ignorance that afflicted George Wallace and the people of Alabama?

What would Kennedy do? What did he do? Say a few words of general censure? Express a hope that all would turn out well, while privately wringing inactive hands over the prospect of losing votes or offending special interest groups (as Presidents in certain other lands have been known to do)? No, Kennedy upheld the law, took decisive action, insisted on personal and moral integrity, as well as the duty of every elected official to obey the law. In short, he sent a contingent of the United States Army to Alabama, thereby removing Mr. Wallace and his mob from the scene rather than the lone black man. Moreover he set an unmistakeable precedent -- that the only thing deserving of intolerance, be it racial, religious or cultural, is intolerance itself.

The “silent majority” elects officials for one mission only -- to give them a voice. Now it’s high noon in Indonesia, and therefore high time that those governing the country remember the common people who put them in office, and actually do something that is in accordance with the will of their constituents. In other words, stop hiding, stop running, stop procrastinating -- Speak up! And if you cannot obey the laws of your own country, then move aside for someone who can.