Romania Journal
Summer 1999 - Postscript

First day of school

September 8

Some relations have come to stay for a while, Camille's niece and her three children. Yesterday was the first day of school for Anthony and Ebony. I was surprised to see they had uniforms. Their mother told me that uniforms are now mandatory in most schools in LA.

I knew that school uniforms was a favorite right-wing cause, but I didn't know it had gone this far. People love order and fear chaos. That's why so many Europeans found fascism so attractive. It's still an affective tool for demagogues and a safe and easy kneejerk response for low, self-important officials. Problems with gangs. Need more control. School uniforms.

In Romania I asked Cristina Cotorcea, a 24-year-old rural high school history teacher, what she remembered about the Ceausescu period. "Only two hours of TV a day," she told me. "All Ceausescu. And in high school, uniforms."

FOLLOWING A LEAD in Robert D. Kaplan's BALKAN GHOSTS, I found a wonderful book, ATHENE PALACE by Countess Waldeck, a firsthand account of Romania going fascist. It's like John Reed's TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD meets CASABLANCA, with a little Dorothy Parker thrown in.

"I came to the Athene Palace the day Paris fell, in the summer of 1940." That's how it starts. Practically the whole book is set in the elegant international hotel where she is staying. A lot of it involves conversations over drinks with German and Romanian elites and international journalists.

Countess Waldeck is a German-born American, and a Jew. At least she makes a point of being a non-Aryan. General, won't it hurt your career to be seen talking to me, a non-Aryan, she asks. She looks intelligently and sympathetically at the protagonists, and as the conversations and anecdotes pile up, the reader gets a vivid picture of a country drifting toward totalitarianism.

WHILE KATHY was taking the older kids to school, four-year-old Bear came into my studio. "Can you put Batman on for me?" Sure, kid, whatever. I popped it in the VCR. It was just Batman, not II or IV or anything. I started watching with him, and I was getting into it. I was surprised to see it was an Order vs. Chaos parable, heavily weighted in support of Order. Always a popular theme.

SCHOOL UNIFORMS...I'm against them. Maybe it's not the first step toward fascism. But the tide toward repression, totalitarianism and cruelty is always pulling and should be resisted in its earliest manifestations.

ROMANIA JOURNAL