I was up late last night because I’ve been putting off processing the rest of my strawberries. I made 9 batches of jam the first day and lost steam. But after almost a week it was time to get the last 2 gallons of strawberries processed and I didn’t manage to do it during daylight. So as I was cleaning the kitchen and boiling strawberries I listened to NPR and they kept repeating the breaking news out of Austria where a man apparently had held his daughter prisoner in his cellar for 24 years and fathered 7 children by her. I can’t imagine anything more monsterous. The fact that this man deceived his neighbors, possibly even his wife into believing he was a normal, 73 year old grandfather caring for three of his daughter’s children is just horrifying. The idea that monsters are masquerading around as normal people in society is very unsettling to say the least. It makes me wonder how a human being decends so far. How many lies and justifications have to be rehersed until the dark ugliness takes over?

Elisabeth told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and he locked her up in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984. (Sky news)

As early as 1978, Fritzl started plotting a basement cellar.

“Amstetten authorities authorised the building of a cellar in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the Austria Press Agency.

Mr Gruber said inspectors examined the project in 1983 – the year before Elisabeth went missing – and did not notice anything suspicious,”(BBC news)

I can’t even begin to imagine, nor do I want to imagine the extent of emotional damage this evil has inflicted on everyone involved.

Austrian officials, while insisting that similar crimes had occurred in other countries, said they were struggling to make sense of the events.

“He was man of stature,” Franz Polzer, the chief of the criminal investigations unit for the Province of Lower Austria, said at a news conference, holding up a photograph of Fritzl, a heavyset, gray-haired man.

“He led a double life,” Polzer continued, “with one family of seven children, with his wife, and a second family of seven children, with his daughter…

“…The police said his wife, Rosemarie, 68, had no inkling of his secret life, believing that their daughter had fled the family for a cult and was unable to take care of her children. Fritzl forced Elisabeth to give up three of the children as babies, and he and his wife raised them. A seventh child died soon after being born.

By most accounts, the three children who grew up in the Fritzls’ care were well-adjusted, each learning to play a musical instrument.” (The news tribune.com)

Except that it probably isn’t possible now for these well adjusted children to be sheltered from the facts of how they came to exist. And how does a person even begin to process that? What do you do when you find out your husband is a monster? Did Mrs. Fritzl really not know? Actually this is one story I really don’t want to learn more about.

I finished canning my strawberry jam and turned on Stephen Colbert. Seeing a grown man put on a blue sequin tube-top pant-unitard somewhat restored my faith in humanity. There is definately ugliness, evil, perversion but at the same time there are people who make us laugh, heros, amazing parents, friends and children. The good people of this world outnumber the bad. The monsters are out there, but they are always looking over their shoulders because they know, eventually they will be discovered. And I take comfort knowing they will answer for what they have done, in this life or the next.

I’ve had a few things I’ve been thinking about blogging. I just can’t get it together though. I was talking to Paige this morning and I asked her if she thinks people act different around her. (Dumb question, I know) And it got me thinking about why we do act weird around people who have experienced something profoundly tragic like Paige has. I think its because they are literally a different person. I know I think of myself as several different people. (Not quite multiple personalities) I think I’m a different person now that I have children than I was before I had children. I was a different person before I was married too. People can relate to those things, or they can’t. One of my best friends basically stopped talking to me when I got married because my life was different, I was different in a way she didn’t understand. It seemed appropriate though, somehow. And our friendship resumed when she got married. This is totally different of course, Paige needs people and friendships and communication. Its one of those things… I wish I knew how to be more helpful…but then again I don’t ever want to know how she feels. Today my solution was cookies.

Which brings me to another troubling thing–food crisis . I have just stockpiled flour, sugar, and rice. One thing that has always freaked me out is the thought of not having food to feed my children. Its really scary to me. When I started noticing food prices going up I was concerned. But at least we can still afford to feed our family. I read some horrid book for an anthropology class about this couple who lived in Bangladesh “studying” this poor community. Being observers only, they decided they wouldn’t interfere and literally watched a family starve to death. That has always made me angry. It seems criminal to see a mother not able to feed her baby anything but grass. Its not even human. But in a way–with all of the annoying emphasis on global warming, that is kind of what we are doing as members of the West (Lets just keep handing Al Gore awards for his brilliant work, k?).

“Some ministers from poor countries, for example, are growing impatient with the way the West is addressing global warming by subsidizing and encouraging conversion of corn, sugar cane and other food products into substitutes for oil. The shift is helping to drive up prices, they say.”

It kind of reminds me of China’s Great Leap Forward. Except that instead of attempting to modernize our economy we’re trying to control global climate. And when “political decisions/beliefs take precedence over commonsense” the apparent result is starvation and economic disaster… I hope I’m being overly dramatic here.

Some of the best discussions I have with BJay happen just as I’m about to drop off to sleep. I suspect he thinks that I’ll more readily agree with him when I’m sleepy. About a week ago B decided to start an interesting political discussion that involved Jack Bauer, John McCain, The US policy on torture, and the perception of America in the world. When I’m awake I’m all over this stuff. BJay is a bit more to the left than I am, so I generally love to annoy him by disagreeing with whatever idea he has formed by listening to NPR. I don’t remember where BJay said he heard John McCain talking about how the world felt about the United States after WWII. Trying to find a twice paraphrased quote on John McCain would take a century, but B was impressed with the idea that John McCain wanted to get the world’s opinion of America back to what it was after WWII–When the Nazis wanted to surrender to the Americans rather than the Russians because the Americans were much more humane. Did I fight the urge to shoot this idea down? I don’t know if I did. I was sleepy. No I did, I muttered something about how the US wasn’t a world power then, and we didn’t have as much personally at stake as the Europeans did with the Nazis. And then the conversation turned to the ethicacy of torture. And B had heard some quote from…sheesh… I think it was a senator?? Having a discussion about how far do we go in the interest of national security. And then he went on to describe a plot line from 24 where some terrorists are going to detonate a nuclear weapon unless we stop them, and how far do we go to get information to stop that from happening. And isn’t it insane that a television show is influencing the discussions of law makers on such a real issue? Yeah, I said. But I of course couldn’t resist even in a sleepy haze to say the television show 24, specifically the character Jack Bauer has only brought torture to light in a way that feels personal. He’s going after these evil guys like the ones who crashed planes into the world trade center and the pentagon. Maybe Jack Bauer was born out of the ash of 9-11, from our collective anger, fear and love of America. He isn’t real, but he came from somewhere or he wouldn’t resonate with so many people. I was checking to see how many people have thought about Jack Bauer’s influence on popular culture and I was intrigued by this article, although its over a year old.

“For weeks, Democrats and their media allies have been on Bush’s case for using the National Security Agency to intercept, without warrant, phone calls and e-mails to terror suspects abroad. Before that, Bush was charged with using secret detention centers in Eastern Europe to interrogate suspects. Before that, the military was accused of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan. Before that, the Justice Department was charged with violating the civil rights of Jose Padilla and the Shoe-bomber.

Bush thus stands accused of violating the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war, ignoring constitutional protections of U.S. citizens, and violating international agreements prohibiting torture and the “rendition” of prisoners to countries where torture is practiced.

Where do the American people stand?

The left may be right on the law, but the people seem to be standing by Bush. Believing the character of this war, where the enemy’s preferred tactic is to slaughter civilians with terror bombings, people seem to agree that we have to follow Jack Bauer’s rules, not American Civil Liberties Union rules.

Yet one senses that Americans are conflicted. We want to think of ourselves as decent people who fight wars honorably. But we believe the enemies of 9-11 are so evil, so depraved, they forfeit the right to be treated honorably. And while we believe in constitutional rights, human rights, civil rights, Miranda warnings and all that, we also believe in winning our wars. For without victory in the war on terror, freedom may not survive.

“Success alone justifies war,” said Von Moltke, as Germany prepared to violate Belgium’s neutrality to outflank France in 1914. Americans appear to believe that, too.

President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and blockaded Southern ports, without congressional authorization. President Wilson locked up Eugene V. Debs in World War I and never let him out. FDR interned 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans in relocation camps, in a wartime act of racial profiling approved by the Supreme Court. Truman dropped atom bombs on defenseless cities, killing 100,000 women and children. Yet all are judged by liberal historians to be great or near-great presidents.”

So this is interesting to me. If Jack Bauer represents some American wild-west type of vigilante hero, why is he also popular in Afghanistan? (I heard that on NPR.) And why is George Bush so unpopular? I guess you can’t be a rogue agent AND the president of the United States. I get a kick out of Colbert making light of the fact that most conservatives hate John McCain, although we don’t understand why. Its so weird that McCain has the nomination locked up when most republicans I know say they will never vote for him. How did that happen? Isn’t it interesting though, that the Jack Bauer universe introduced the first Black President of the United States…and its looking more and more like that is going to be our future reality?

I caught a segment of The Today show the other day where this woman was talking about Alpha-moms. Her comment was so perfect, she said Alpha moms are the ones who plan the parties and execute all creative control on a project. The Beta moms might get asked to bring paper towels and garbage bags, but Alpha moms will bring some anyway because she doesn’t trust that anyone else can do anything right. It was so perfect. Having a child in school for the first time, I’m coming in contact with more and more Alpha moms. I was out running errands last week and realized it was a full hour until I had to pick up Asher but I had no where else to go and two sacked out kids. So I decided I’d just get in the car line to pick up Asher a full hour early. The kids can easily sleep for an hour while I wait and I had some magazines and a cell phone if I was bored. I was sure I would be the first one. Not so. I was the second. Within minutes there were about 10 cars jockeying for a good spot. I had to just roll my eyes when this huge suv passed everyone else already waiting in line to park in front of the first car in line. Then it happened again, a van pulled in front of the suv making a new first position. Usually I just park the van and drag all the kids to pick up Asher on foot. Waiting in the car line seems like a waste of fuel. If you don’t show up an hour before school lets out you end up idling in line for 20 minutes. But I’ve been there early enough a couple times and its always the same cars parked there ridiculously early. Another appalling display was at a kids party I went to with Asher. The party was put on by a sweet family who are new to the area. I stayed because I’m such an overprotective mom, there is no way I’m going to drop my kid off with people I don’t know. One other mom stayed as well. She was the quintessential Alpha mom. The family hosting had just moved from Massachusetts and the mom was saying how up north her son was only in 1/2 day Kindergarten and they had no homework and weren’t even beginning to read. So it was a rude awakening for the poor kid when he moved here. He had a hard adjustment going full day with an hour of homework afterward, and they got one of the infamous letters about having him held back. I was very sympathetic, but my sentiments were muffled by Alpha mom’s excitement. “Oh, that is great! That means that our schools are better than the ones in Massachusetts! I think its wonderful that they are actually DOING things in Kindergarten.” Alpha mom then went on to instruct us on how to get our children to complete their homework, what books she used to get her son reading before Kindergarten, and how many sports her son was involved in. What really broke my heart was her excitement over the summer camp programs she got her son into. Seven full weeks of 8am-5pm summer camp. “You’d better go down there first thing Monday if you want to get a spot. They are only taking 34 children.” Sigh. I don’t doubt her kid is very bright and very well behaved. He certainly has anything he could want in their 4000 square foot house that is apparently too small. But I wonder if he’s got enough emotionally. Asher was student of the week last week and all the children wrote sentences on what they liked about him. Alpha mom’s son wrote, “I like Asher. I took Asher to go to [lazertag]. I love you. This is [name].” In the picture he drew he and Asher are holding hands. It might be a stretch to psychoanalyze a Kindergartners writing sample, but it stood out against the rest emotionally. It was sweet. I guess it isn’t really my place to judge anyone’s parenting. Alpha mom is doing lots of things right to end up with such a sweet little boy. I just don’t relate to the need to push my child into every possible activity. Or the desire to have some facility spend summer vacation with my child. And I guess I’m okay with only bringing garbage bags and paper towels too. Even if they are just the extras.

Before I went to India I read Vikram Seth’s tome “A Suitable Boy”. The professor who assigned me work for my independent study (the argument that sealed the deal in convincing my parents I should go half way around the world with a [crazy] woman I barely knew) assigned me the book. I have bought three copies. Two I lent out and never got back. I saw it at Goodwill two years ago for .50 cents. A bargain. There are nearly 1500 pages. Anyway, the story is woven into an explanation of Indian Politics in the years just after partition. I doubt that a clear explanation of Indian politics could take up any less than 1500 pages. So I vaguely follow what is going on politically in India and Pakistan… at least when the headlines show up on my Google homepage. I feel like I’m tied to those places.

My first trip to India was preceded by my first trip to Pakistan. My hostess was this incredibly extroverted, verbose woman who runs a great store in my hometown. The store is a cultural experience on its own. When you walk in the powerful aromas of moth balls, cigarette smoke, green tea, and incense hit you in a strangely pleasant way. You can find everything you never knew existed there. Amazing things. Beautiful things. Bizarre things. I went with a friend and mentioned that I would love to go to India. Without hesitation the shop owner suggested I go with her next time she goes on a buying trip. There is a reason you have insane adventures when you are young. My older, wiser self would smile and make my exit as soon as possible. The young, naive child of 18 jumped at the opportunity. All it took was convincing my parents that a very normal invitation had been extended. And then I had to round up the money. You might think that a woman in her 50s who has no problem traipsing the slums of Pakistan and India to purchase items would be… local. Nope. She is as Caucasian as I am. She was a fascinating character. Raised by wealthy parents, attended Sweet Brier–then joined the peace corps and–this is where the details are fuzzy. I think she got pregnant and had a daughter she raised on her own for a while. At some point, she married a perfectly boring yes man who endures her constant lambasting with quiet indifference. He was in foreign service so they lived in India. He had three girls of his own, so they formed an all-girl kind of Brady Bunch. Her daughter married a Pakistani she went to college with… maybe Columbia?? I don’t remember which college they attended. But they just as strangely opened their home to me–a perfect stranger, and I had no problem accepting their generosity. I arrived in Pakistan during monsoon. There was flooding in Lahore. It had affected some of the extended family. The social culture shock was more of an adjustment than I expected. In the limited circles I was used to dressing for, jeans and a t-shirt are/were perfectly acceptable. I was not prepared for dining with jewelry. I was not prepared for a home environment where servants outnumbered residents. I was not prepared for a family dynamic where the nanny to child ratio was 1-1. I definitely was not prepared for the kind of snide, scrupulous condescension the family treated me with. I don’t think I even understood what it was. I just knew I felt way more comfortable talking to the maids than anyone else. The maids were mostly from other Asian countries. One evening I stayed in while the adults were out and I got to talking to the maids about their lives. One was putting her sisters through nursing school. She showed me her family photos. Another was from Sri Lanka and hadn’t seen her own daughter for 3 years. They weren’t mistreated as far as I knew, but they definitely weren’t supposed to talk to me. There were cooks, men I never saw except when they might bring things from the kitchen to the table. And I guess what we might call a Butler, his is the only name I remember. It was Khalid. I think I just liked that name. And I liked how they said it. An arabic-sounding guttural ‘k’. Then there were sweepers and a… I’ll have to look up the word. Chokendar (?) an armed guard who was posted at the entrance. A couple drivers, and various others. I’m just a military brat so this kind of household was soooo foreign. I just didn’t know how to relate. But two things of interest happened in Pakistan when I was there–wait just kidding. A ton of interesting things happened. Two political things happened. One–someone in the family was sent to jail. There was talk over the dinner table about business practices and laws that made it impossible to avoid activities outside the law. The family were very distressed about it. And just after I left Bhutto was ousted from power. And to give you an idea of what a clueless naive little idiot I was, I sent the family a card when I got back. Mostly for the daughter. A perfectly spoiled little girl, super intelligent–but obviously overly fussed over. Anyway, I sent her a card and some candy and the “get out of jail free” card from my monopoly set. Gah. Also, I had purchased ink pens and Tootsie pops to hand out to children while I was there. I was going to give poor children the gift of tooth decay. I got to keep the pens, but the candy (two Sam’s club boxes full, a good 20 pounds!) was immediately gifted to the family. They don’t get much American candy so it was a treat. But, to my annoyance I was not even credited as the giver. And when I left they gave me some for the plane. I could seriously go on forever about this. I almost forgot why I started this post to begin with. Oh yeah…

So I saw the google headline Musharraf rules out resignation and I got to thinking about Pakistan. I’ve been there. It seems bizarre to me now, here I am a 30 year old full time mom of 4 (sorry Crysta I had to steal the phrase) so far away from that upheaval and distress. In my comfortable home, not a servant in sight, but things are orderly. When I think of the near scrapes and mishaps that could have literally ended my life (I’m much more paranoid these days) its amazing that I’m here. I may get into those some other time. When I left Pakistan I left by myself. You won’t believe this, but the airport in Lahore, thankfully, has extremely tight security. But nothing is explained in English. No flight numbers, no easy to read flight schedules. I vaguely recall that I had someone, a loafer, there to help me get through the various security lines and get my bags in the right direction. He wasn’t very aggressive, not like most of the men were. So I ended up getting bumped back in line several times. Since he didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Urdu he couldn’t do much more than point me in the right direction. I almost missed my flight. I don’t know how easily I could have gone missing. They make a copy of your passport and every one is to be accounted for before the plane takes off. I was responsible for delaying my flight, I think. I just didn’t understand which line was for my flight. Luckily for me I had made friends with a guy who sold music at a concession stand a week earlier when I was flying to Delhi. I wanted to pick up some Ghazals, though I didn’t understand a word. He recognized me and dragged me to the doors that led out to the huge airplanes sitting with stairs pulled up to them. There was an argument, a heated one that went on for a few minutes between the music guy and the guy who lets you get on the plane. Finally, I was shoved out the door in the direction of my airplane. I don’t think I’ll ever know how close I came to not leaving Pakistan. That, and all the menacing looks I got from some people on the street make me feel somewhat tied to Pakistan. With little tiny strings. Not nostalgic strings. Strings of fear and amazement.