running some figures

I sometimes tell people that Austria is politically progressive, but socially conservative. I think they call that a sugar-coating.

Last week, the Viennese anti-racism organization Zara released its statistics about racism in Austria in 2006. According to one local newspaper, Zara "documented more than 1,500 incidents of racism in Austria last year, the highest number in the seven years the group has been active." Spokespeople for Zara also said "the increase may reflect a growing awareness of racism, rather than an increase in attacks."

As a white American who grew up with racism all around him, my initial reaction to that statistic was cynical. It seemed kind of cute that someone would actually document each discrete incident of racism. So I dug around a little bit for a corresponding figure for the incidence of racism in the US, and found that, according to one US Department of Justice report, there were 9,035 hate crimes committed in the US in 2004. Of these, "intimidation accounted for 31.3 percent; destruction, damage, or vandalism comprised 31.1 percent; simple assault, 19.4 percent; and aggravated assault, 11.5 percent."

I don't know how Zara defines a racist incident, but I assume it doesn't match the US DOJ's definition of a hate crime, so it's risky to compare the two figures. Nevertheless, let's do a little sloppy math here: the number of racist incidents that Zara recorded is about one sixth that of the number of hate crimes documented in the US two years ago. Assuming that, at most, half of the Austrian incidents could be qualified as hate crimes, let's say that Austria experienced about one twelfth the amount of racist incidents. But here's the thing: Austria is about one hundredth the size of the USA. So proportionally, it's--well, relatively speaking, let's just say Austria's got a real problem.

Running these figures set me back on my heels, once again, about racism and bigotry here. Zara's report isn't news to any of the immigrants living in Austria, nor to any natives who have done much traveling to more racially mixed countries, nor to anyone who has seen the preponderance of racist graffiti all over Vienna (more on this later). But as Zara says, their findings may indicate "a growing awareness" of racism." In my experience, some Austrians think that using the German word "neger" for black people is actually okay. I think a lot of them believe this is a progressive and tolerant country. Oh well.

Playground Issues

At first, the playground looked the same as ever. But once we wandered around a bit, we realized that none of of our friends were there. In their place were a lot of older kids, playing rough.

Adinah went straight to the Seidelbahn. It's like a downhill, snowless ski-lift: a seat attached to a line, attached to a cable which runs down a slight twenty yard slope. The kids climb up on a wooden platform, jump onto the seat, then sail down the length of the cable; at the bottom of the run, they hit a rubber brake, which sends them swinging high in the air, then rebounding back towards their starting point.

For a kid her size, Adinah is a pretty daring Seidelbahner. She can jump up onto the seat by herself, and get set as it accelerates, or ride slalom, swinging from side to side as she hurtles down the line. When she hits the end of the line and pitches way up, nearly upside down on the tiny rubber seat, she's usually laughing.

But yesterday, the Seidelbahn was overrun with rowdy eight year old girls, spoiled brats and--Jesus H.Christ!--a little boy with one of those toy guns that shoots plastic balls! Adinah wasn't particularly unnerved by any of it, but I was at Code Red as soon as this punk started waving his gun in my face. Yoo hoo, Careless Mommy?! Your little Navy Seal over here is gonna take out somebody's eye!

Suddenly, the playground was a DMZ of bad behavior and child hazards. Clueless parents walking into the path of the Seidelbahn, other kids screaming in terror after encounters with the ball gun, pushing, shoving, the works. I thought the eight year old girls on the Seidelbahn platform were the worst. They hardly seemed to notice the smaller kids under their feet, and they were launching themselves onto the ride with these wide, violent swings that nearly knocked over onlookers both adult and juvenile. Very bad, very Dangerous!

I managed to keep my own playground issues in check, but only just barely. This may be so obvious I needn't state it, but as a kid, I was bullied. So as a papa, it's possible that I perhaps get a little sometimes slightly overprotective. Maybe. Probably I'm just, you know, vigilant.

In any case, it was me, not Adinah, who got rattled. When my wife showed up, I practically ran over and told on the entire playground. Adinah just kept doing her thing, elbowing in amongst the older kids, and looking up at them blankly, or with adoration, but never with fear.

The Seidelbahn platform has a capacity of about eight to ten kids, and it was almost full when two sisters in identical pink jackets and stocking caps came clambering up, followed closely by their grandmother, a sixty-something frau with a skier's tan and platinum blond hair. One of the girls was wearing sunglasses, which made her look like a pint-sized Kurt Cobain, and that's probably why she soon tripped, fell off the platform, and started wailing. But Grandma suspected foul play. She hissed at another girl who'd been standing nearby on the platform, then she reached out and whacked this poor child with the back of her hand! The kid fled the scene, looking back over her shoulder in abject panic.

Eventually Anette, Adinah and I fled too, but I was the only one traumatized. The lesson? There's oblivious, and there's overprotective. Then there is the Psycho Ski Granny.

Attention Deficit Economy

I do actually have some work.

As you might have guessed from one recent post, I'm working on a piece about YouTube, eBay, blogging and some of the other phenomena (regrettably?) deemed Web 2.0. And all of this virtual space junk, also known as Me Media, makes me think some of us are pitching forward, face first, into an attention economy. A few months back, the New Yorker ran a nice piece on YouTube, and they spoke with a gal named Little Loca and an older chap who calls himself geriatric1927, both of whom are stars on YouTube. These people begin with a desire to speak and be heard, and in the case of Little Loca, a.k.a . Stevie Ryan, an aspiring LA actress, a desire to be famous. But when they become famous on YouTube, this doesn't necessarily translate into fame anywhere else, in either the virtual or the "real" world. They get attention, they might even get recognized on the street, but they don't profit financially from their fame. They are rich with attention. They command page views. Their first life is not necessarily enriched by their second.

The American political and social scientist Herbert Simon may have been the first guy to write about an attention economy, and he certainly could have been predicting the Information Age and Web 2.0 when he cracked that "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." So it isn't surprising that business strategists, advertising execs and Spam generators have all been abuzz about the attention economy for the last ten years. As it turns out, O'Reily Media, the software manual publisher who coined the phrase Web 2.0, actually proclaimed "The Attention Economy" as the focus of their 2006 Emerging Technology Conference.

Thinking of this blog as a part of the attention economy seems intuitive to me: I've been showing off with words since I learned how to pronounce "indubitably." But isn't gaming the attention economy just a way of indulging in the first and most deadly sin, the sin of Pride? A gal has to be really arrogant to believe that her opinion is worth as much or more than all the others in the air. In the past, if that gal, or that fellow, was actually a good writer, we wouldn't call their work a sin or an attention-getting device. We'd call it literature.

Flashback 42

[A page from my journal in New York, three and a half years ago....]

After two very early morning phone calls from Vienna two days in row, at the hour when phone calls only mean something very bad or very good, life for me has become an extended slo-mo moment. My actions feel like those of a body which I am operating from above, like a puppeteer. Time has softened and stretched. I am watching a movie about my life.

There is news from Ethiopia. There is a girl for us there.

I have to be ready to get on a plane to Vienna in four days. This is really happening. This is real life. So why does it feel so unbelievable?

This morning I met our medicated neighbor J. in the hallway, and I told him I may be going to Africa to meet our daughter. I told him that I hope I can get over all of my worries and my anxieties and just get everything done in time.

J. said, "You know, all that paperwork stuff tends to take care of itself. So you might as well just relax and enjoy it."

In other words, the ride is bigger than me now. All I have to do is step up, and hold on.

contact.

The black science-fiction writer Samuel Delany once made a distinction between two things that people do: networking and making contact. He started by suggesting that networking is getting in touch with people instrumentally--that is, for economic or material gain of some sort. Then he told a story: a friend of his was out for a run one day in New York City, and he saw an old lady get mugged. The thief knocked her over, then took off running with her purse. The guy ran over, helped the lady to her feet, and said, "Wait a minute--I'll be right back.' Then he took off after the mugger. Delany's friend is a marathon runner. Once the mugger saw someone was chasing him, he ran faster. The runner just maintained his pace and kept the thief in sight. After a while the mugger started to get a little tired, but the runner was still coming on strong. Eventually, the mugger had to stop and catch his breath. Delany's friend ran up to the guy, slapped him, snatched the old ladies' purse back, and said, 'Shame on you.' Then he turned around, ran the distance back to the old lady, and gave her back her purse. That was contact, Delany explained.

I tell the story because today I'm convinced that much of what has been called Web 2.0, including YouTube, Wikipedia, eBay, blogs like the one you are reading, and MySpace and other social networking sites, are actually more about contact than networking. People may log on searching for material gain, but it's really about electronically reaching right out to someone and saying nothing too much more complicated than 'Hello.' One begins by wanting to sell a crappy used laser pointer, or show off the way you can swing a sentence, or even get famous. But as Chris Rock once said, no matter what you might think about strip clubs, you are NOT going to get laid in the Champagne room. And you are not gonna get famous on YouTube. (Just ask Little Loca.) But if you poke around a bit, you might read or see something moving. Or you might share a moment with someone you've never met before.

A few weeks back, on the night before our daughters' birthday, Anette won an online auction for a Kaufladen, which is basically a small set of shelves, a toy cash register, and a front counter, all of which a kid can use to play General Store. The parents of the previous owner were very sweet, especially after Anette explained that we really hoped to win the auction (hint hint) because we wanted to give their Kaufladen as a birthday present to our little girl the next day. In fact, after we won, the father of the other kid drove the thing over to us personally. I met him down on the street to pay him, and I brought him a bottle of wine, because we thought it was so nice of the guy to haul it across Vienna to us. We stood there under the streetlights, smiling goofily, and he asked me, 'So how old is your daughter?' When I told him, he said, 'Oh really? That's how old our girl is!' And he smiled like he knew me.

It was just a little exchange. But that was contact.

Gary Floyd Across Time and Space

The immigrant is sometimes taken by an urge, not to fit in, speak German or otherwise be a new sort of man, but to revert to old loyalties and lives. The fog of nostalgia swirls around him and news of home--his first and oldest home, that is--pelts the ground like spiteful oobleck. He parades about the cobblestones of Vienna while wearing his fathers' pointy black cowboy boots. He has his Austrian friends over for tacos and guacamole. He becomes more of a Texan than he ever was when he lived in Texas.

He begins to write a soppy e-mail to an old friend back in Austin. Without even meaning to indulge these sentimental kniptions, he puts on a CD that a Swiss mother burned for him recently. He bobs his head and sings along. He remembers the singer. Gary Floyd. A pink haired gay punk shaped like Divine. Gary Floyd sang about cruising married men in the adult bookstore on Saturday night. About policemen moonlighting in the Ku Klux Klan. Growling, pleading, screaming, accusing and begging you with a voice like blue fire. He sang for the Dicks and he was way, way, WAY more punk rock than you.

Then the immigrant is crying. Seizing up into a grimace and choking on tears that don't want to come out at first. He thinks of his hometown friend, a schoolteacher now but once a punk like him and weren't they both in the audience that night that Gary Floyd and the Dicks played Voltaires Basement? Is this sad? No. Where is Gary Floyd now--is he okay? Don't know. So why the tears?

Because everything is different and everything is also the same. Reaching out to that good old friend across an ocean listening to the same music twenty-five years or five minutes and three lifetimes away from that moment Gary Floyd touched us for the first time.

Because sometimes his brain is so full of names and pictures and feelings that it feels like he's going to burst. Tears come out instead.

* * *

The immigrant promises himself he will Google Gary Floyd. Then he gets back to work.

Uggh.

Nine p.m. local time, the kid's stopped coughing and finally fallen asleep, and to borrow a phrase from another, better blogger, this bitch is tired. I fought off demons of self-doubt and website gremlins all day, as I hacked my way through an online application for yet another ginormous NGO. (Vienna is stinking with them, and goddamn me, I think I'd like to make a difference--help people somehow--so I'm applying to the ones that I can.)

This is the deadliest hour--it's too early to go to bed but I'm too beat to actually do anything (though I seem to be writing....) The apartment is big and quiet and I feel, well, not so much sad as just wasted. AA people have this saying, this acronym: H.A.L.T. It's meant to be a reminder to yourself to never take on anything too big or make any crucial decisions when you're Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. I think the drunks are onto something here.

The danger at this time of night, when you're Lonely, Tired and maybe a little discouraged too, is that it's easy to start kicking your own ass, just because it's been another long day and you're tore up. I'm thinking, damn, I didn't get THAT much tangible work done today--didn't do any heavy lifting or underwater welding--and I only took care of Adinah for a couple of hours. So I why do I feel so used up and old? Am I a colossal loser?

No, I'm a father.

It's a job. It's work, just like motherhood or stuntcar driving. It knocks the stuffing out of you every day. Sometimes it's like the work of writing: even if you do it all the time, it never gets easy.

I certainly don't know how my mom did it.