Losing Language

At the outset let me thank you for the overwhelming outpouring of love and good wishes in celebration of my 93^rd. I have tried to respond individually to all of you, but if I have missed any, I apologize and I thank you now.  The celebration was, of necessity, muted although Radha did bring some champagne. Our dear friend Irene Brenner came by with my favourite banana bread. Kathy Van Genne brought goodies, including chocolates and muffins. Our friends and neighbors the Sloteks gifted us with a box of Indian sweets (and a candle). They in fact came to the door, and crooned ‘Happy Birthday’ through their masks. Ken Housego, ex-colleague, now retired in Nova Scotia, wrote a newsy, two-page letter. Delize Storcer addressed me with my new name Mar!

It all made me reminisce. I have to admit that the sands are running fast, but in retrospect, what a life it has been!!!Someone up there helped me immensely and I am grateful. I have no regrets whatever. I am able to share my life with a beautiful, loving, caring family.

But there was one unfortunate, uncomfortable incident which I shall sooner forget than write about. One of my cousins in India, who speaks very little English called me to convey his greetings and I suddenly found that I was unable to respond properly in Malayalam, my mother tongue. I could not frame proper sentences. As it happens my vocabulary is less extensive; my grammar is less polished.  My syntax is wrong,

The reason is very simple. Lack of practice. Since Nalini and I don’t speak the same language, English is the lingua franca in the house. When we met people from my state, we had to use English because it would have been impolite to leave Nalini out of the conversation. My friend Shanti Menon who lives in Mississauga calls me once in a while and though I gamely start the conversation in Malayalam, I segue into English. And so with Liza Paul who lives in Toronto. When we occasionally talk, we start in Malayalam but I quickly revert to English, while she would continue in Malayalam. I speak six languages quite fluently (although laden with mistakes), but I am losing fluency because of lack of use. Using language is a skill and without practice the skill gets ‘blunted’. It is sad but true.

Many months ago, I read an article in The New Yorker written by one Jenny Liao. It was under the title “Forgetting My First Language”.  She wrote, “No one prepared me for the heartbreak of losing my first language. It does not feel like the sudden, sharp pain of losing someone you love, but rather a dull ache that slowly builds until it becomes part of you. My first language, Cantonese, is the only one I share with parents, and as it slips from my memory, I also lose my ability to communicate with them. When I tell people this, their eyes tend to grow wide with disbelief, as if it is so absurd that I must be joking……” It is no joke. It is painful.

Having said this, I must also say that if I went back to Kerala and spent a week or two, the fluency will return, although I might miss idiomatic expressions and slang. Liao says that “When I speak Cantonese with my parents now, I rely on translation apps.”

Is there an app for Malayalam, I wonder!!!!

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Yesterday leaders from 20 nations met in Rome. This is a ritual as sacred as the pilgrimage to Lourdes. It is at such meetings that the leaders make sure that Armageddon does not come too soon. After all, the people elected (in most cases) these patriots to make sure that the problems of the world are resolved amicably. For instance, the New Washington Post yesterday headlined this: G20 Leaders Endorse Plans to Block Corporations from Sheltering Profits.

WOW!! What a development! In a couple of weeks Biden will return from his jaunt and ask the big corporations in the US to stop sheltering profits in Costa Rica, Bahamas or wherever and they will say, “Yes, sir. Just as you say.”

These guys will then meet within a few days in Glasgow to lament how climate change is wreaking havoc to mankind (and animal and plant kind). This also is an annual event. The participants make fiery, passionate speeches, go home and do nothing. The New York Times of September 21 reported that 22 animals and one plant have been declared as extinct and removed from the endangered species list. The announcement could also offer a glimpse into the future. It comes amid a million species at risk of becoming extinct, many within decades. Human activities like farming, logging and mining take habitat from animals and pollute much of what is left. People poach and overfish. Climate change adds new peril. If you are interested in knowing more read this fascinating article:

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We all like rooms with a view. The structure pictured below is guaranteed to give you stunning views.

One of my cousins, Balachandran Nair, an avid Subtext fan, sent me this.

Looks like a cable car ferries people to and fro, though ‘fro’ is not very clear. The effort involved in constructing the house (?) on top of the rock is mind boggling. Don’t forget to note the carved archway at the bottom. I suspect it is for embellishment; I cannot see any practical use for it unless it leads to a spiral staircase. I am not sure who actually owns it or whether if anyone lives in it or where exactly it is. The architecture suggests an Asian country. Methinks.

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Biographies of famous people are always fascinating, especially if the book questions popularly held views.

One George Wheatcroft O.B.E has just published a book, “Churchill’s Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill”.  Wheatcroft  (London and Oxford ) is a well-known British journalist, author and historian. In the book he characterizes Churchill thus. “He was not only a racist but a hypocrite, a dissembler, a narcissist, an opportunist, an imperialist, a drunk, a strategic bungler, a tax dodger, a neglectful father, a credit hogging author, a terrible judge of character and most of all, a masterful mythmaker.”I must say that it not the first time that the dark side of the man had been openly written. Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire is one of them.

Pandora Papers And Such

At the outset, I need to say that the blog of October 9 (First Person Singular) received overwhelming approbation and got the most hits ever, since I had started Subtext in 1988.  Kathy Harper said that the poems were evocative. A few people had strongly suggested that I write a few more and publish a book.

I sincerely thank you for the suggestion, but frankly I don’t have the energy to undertake the project. Having published two books already, I know the effort (and frustration) that go into publishing books. I do appreciate the thought, dear friends.

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We all have heard of the Pandora’s Box. To refresh your memory, it is an artifact in Greek Mythology connected with the story of Pandora, the first woman.  

Zeus left a box in her care with instructions not to open it. But curiosity got the better of her and she opened the box. Horrible things flew out, including greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty and death. The one thing that was left in the box was hope.

I am sure you have by now read about the Pandora Papers. In case you have not, it is a leak of millions of documents (11,903,676 to be exact) that reveal hidden wealth, tax avoidance and in some cases money laundering by some of the world’s rich and powerful. Like King Abdullah of Jordan who has amassed properties in the UK and the US worth more than 100 million dollars. Like Putin and many of his cohort oligarchs. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is linked to 11 firms, one of which was valued as holding assets of $30 million. Members of Pakistan Prime Minister’s inner circle, including cabinet ministers and their families, have secretly opened companies and trusts holding several million dollars. Even Britain’s ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is in the list. It is a long list!!

More than 600 journalists in 117 countries have been trawling through the files from 14 sources. The data was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington D C. They had been working with more than 140 media organizations on its biggest ever global investigation.

The interesting fact is that most, if not all, have siphoned off money from international aid, especially from the US.

I am not sure if ‘thieving’ was also let out when Pandora opened the box. But it is safe to assume that the propensity to steal has been with us from time immemorial. During the Colonial era, the colonists freely took possession of valuable arts and artifacts from wherever they were found. One of the more notorious acts of thievery occurred when Lord Elgin, helped himself to a number of marble statues from Greece. The “Elgin Marbles” are in the British museum and the Greeks have been for years asking for their return. But Boris Johnson recently ruled out any question of returning the sculptures saying that they were legally purchased? You do have receipts, Boris?

Smuggling is a form of thieving and people have been involved in this for many years. Of course, we all know that in Africa it is a thriving business, especially elephant tusks and rhino horns. The poachers kill the rhino to get the tusk and so the park officials these days saw off the tusks so that the rhino is safe.

But the effect is temporary since the horn grows back like fingernails.

Besides horn and tusks people smuggle a lot many things: gold, drugs……

But cactus?

Andrew Cattabriga, the president of the Association for Biodiversity and Conservation has uncovered a plot to smuggle more than 1,000 of some of the world’s rarest cacti, valued at over 1.2 million dollars on the black market.

I am afraid I have to confess that I am guilty of stealing something that belongs to the Solomon Islands. That country was one of the theatres of the Second World War and the Allied forces had shot down many Japanese fighter planes. The places where the planes fell are preserved as open-air museums. We went to one of these museums to see the planes. The area around the planes was cleared of grass and shrubs. I climbed into one of them and sat on the pilot’s seat, trying the various knobs and controls. It seems that I had pulled at something. A bent tube came unmoored. It is about eight inches long.

I tried frantically to put it back, but could not. So instead of throwing it on the ground, I put it in my pocket. I hope you won’t squeal on me to the government.

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As you are aware, Trump was suspended from Facebook for two years and cannot return until the “risk to public safety is receded.”  So, what did Orange Julius do? Started a new social network. On the 20^th he announced that the company will be called Digital World Acquisition Corp. Its social network is called (hold on to your seats pilgrims) Truth Social! Washington Post reported two days ago that “Truth Social” was defaced by pranksters within hours of its launch. Visitors saw a pig defecating, supposedly posted by “donaldjtrump”.

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Horrible news. I had always thought that the guns and bullets used in movies were dummies, not real ones. It appears that the prop guns are for real, loaded with real bullets. On Thursday Alec Baldwin, actor and producer, shot two people on a film set in New Mexico, after discharging a prop firearm. Halyna Hutchins, director of photography was pronounced dead and the other, Joel Souza is in the hospital having suffered serious injuries. At press, the information is that the Asst. Director gave Baldwin a gun saying “cold gun” meaning that the bullets are blanks, which turned out to be false. What made Baldwin point the gun at the cinematographer and director and shoot is a mystery. Obviously, he was playing a prank and  it misfired. You might want to pursue this story as it develops.

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Halloween is fast approaching and I assume you will indulge in the traditional practice of carving pumpkins into Jack O’ Lanterns. For the artistically inclined, I am giving below a design to copy.

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Earth shattering news. I have decided to change my name to “Mar”. I was inspired by the famous rapper Kanye West who has officially changed his name to “Ye”. A Los Angeles judge granted the rapper’s name change on the 10^th. His name at one time was Kanye Omari West.  Kim Kardashian and West—Ye—have been separated since January of this year. Incidentally one of their children is named North, and as such her full name is North West.

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UNUSUAL NAMES

It has been quite a while since I posted this. The names are of real people whom I have heard on TV.

Sara Oister

Peter Cancro

Emmett Till

London May Breed

Brad Kloutz

Dannie Don Marries

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Redux

“Once upon a time, there was/were…………” How many million times has this introduction to a fairy tale been said by loving parents all over the world to their young kids! The earliest I remember are stories written by Aesop, the legendary Greek fabulist. Each story had a ‘moral’ at the end of it. I am not sure if the moral had any impact on me or not.

“Once upon a time”, is not defined. What? 1,000 years ago? 100 years ago? This we don’t know. For instance, there is a recent documentary by CNN on Princess Diana and the general flavor of the story is that of a fairy tale.

Fairy tales always involve a reversal of fortune. The piece of cheese in the crow’s beak falls to the ground where a fox is waiting for it. A scullery maid becomes a queen. A princess is killed in a car accident.

One thing that we might not be especially aware of is that one of the greatest fairy tale writers was Oscar Wilde. Surprising because we associate him with highly sophisticated comedies, superb one-liners etc. But as you know he was jailed because he was a homosexual. He was thrown in Reading jail  and it was when he was languishing there that he wrote fairy tales.  The Happy Prince, for instance. Or The Nightingale and the Rose. Or The Devoted Friend.

Looks like every century produces its share of fairy tales. One of them just played out in the the land of Lincoln, Washington and Trump. Something along the lines of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a legend that dates back to the Middle Ages, written by Brothers Grimm.

To refresh your memory. The town of Hamelin in Germany had an unusual problem. It was infested with rats. Robert Browning describes it well.

“Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

Made nests in men’s Sunday hats,

And even spoiled the women’s chats,

By drowning their speaking

With shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.”

Coming back to the Brothers Grimm, the fable goes like this (I am paraphrasing here): The mayor and city officials were frustrated, not knowing what to do. Then one day a man dressed in a long coat of many-colored bright cloth (the reason why he was called the Pied Piper) and wearing a funny looking hat, approached the mayor and said that for a thousand gilders he would rid the town of rats.

The mayor readily agreed. The piper stepped onto the street and played a tune on his pipe and ‘rats came tumbling out of the houses’. They followed the piper who led them to the river Weber, where they all drowned.

But when the piper went to collect his fees, the mayor mocked him and said that he needed the money for other things, like his weekly lunch, for instance.

The piper was very angry, but said nothing. He stepped out of the council chamber and played a joyous tune and all the children came running out of there homes and followed him to Koppelberg Hill. Then a ‘wondrous portal’ opened wide and the piper and the kids disappeared. Except one child who was lame, who lived to narrate the story.

Coming back to America, as I said, fables are playing out there as well. For example, once upon a time, Palm Beach was infested by rats. The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, (Republican) announced a reward of a million dollars for anyone who would rid the town of this nuisance.

Suddenly a Piper, dressed very much like the the guy you see above, appeared before him and for 1 million dollars promised to get rid of the problem. And like the story told by the Brothers Grimm, the rats were led to the Pacific Ocean. And they drowned.

But when the Piper went to collect his fees, DeSantis scoffed at the piper and said that he was an important guy and had important things to take care of, including paying lobbyists, and for this he needed the cash.

The Piper was downright angry, but he calmly stepped into the sun and played a very unusual but gay tune on his pipe. The story was picked up by local and national news, and social media as well. The social media also took part. Within a few days day a throng of people assembled in Mar-a-Lago, the official residence of the 45^th President. Everyone in the crowd had a red headband to signify that they were, indeed, Republicans.

They all started to dance to the Piper’s tune. Well, they tried to dance. Obviously, some of them were struggling. Chuck Grassley for instance. Though he was dancing his heart out, he was seriously hampered by his 88-year-old arthritic knees. Ted Cruz appeared to have two left feet. Kevin McCarthy was just going through the motions. Steve Bannon had a dancing partner, Marjorie Taylor Green. Steve was in a Masai costume and was carrying a spear. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema had headbands which were half blue and half red. They were waltzing along although the music was much more upbeat.

The second last man seemed to have an orange glow,, and also seemed to be trying to lead behind. The very last person was very slow, and had a limp thanks to an early attack of polio. He was also half blind, if his glasses were any indication.

Suddenly a mountain appeared at the end of the Mar-a-Lago road. It had a portal into which the Piper led the throng into a cavernous chasm, which was slowly starting to close. Before the man with the orange glow could go in, he tripped on his red tie, but he scrambled to get up and made it to the chasm before it closed completely.  They were all in except the last man, who groped for the entrance because of that darn leg and those thick glasses. And he was left to tell the tale.

Years from now, indeed centuries from now, I have no doubt that this will be enshrined in the pantheon of fables.

First Person Singular

No, this is not another reflection on English and English usage. Rather it is an introspective piece on my childhood. This is my birthday month (if the expression is correct) and I will be turning 93 in a fortnight, October 24 to be exact. A few days ago, “when my mind was in a vacant, pensive mood” I was trying to recall my growing years. Studying classical music and Sanskrit was mandatory. But another thing in which I spent a lot of time was learning English. My father was very adamant that I acquire proficiency in the language and to that effect he would make reading English everyday mandatory. He introduced me to Hardy, Conrad, Maugham, Wodehouse, Scott and such. But he also made me memorize many poems. Many of them were short poems like Wordsworth’s Daffodils. If the poems were long, he selected stanzas that he thought were worth memorizing. If I did as I was told, he would give me one quarter of a rupee as a reward. That in modern currency would equal to .5 cents. This massive amount allowed me to take in a movie.  I have forgotten most of the poems but I do remember snippets from many well-known pieces. For instance, I remember, “Kindness is like snow; it beautifies everything it covers.” by Kahlil Gibran. “Far from the madding crowd” by Thomas Gray. “The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.” by Omar Khayyam

I became very fond of poetry that sometimes I tried my hand at it. The other day while going through an old file called “Bouquets and Brickbats” I came across the manuscripts of a few poems. I am taking the liberty of reproducing below four of them. Without having a real talent for writing poetry, I resorted to using ‘blank verse’ for my compositions.

I was a hopeless romantic when I was growing up. I fell in love with every beautiful woman there was, including film stars like Nargis, Noor Jahan, Norma Shearer, Deborah Kerr—-the list is endless. I also must admit that it all came to an end when I met Nalini in Africa in 1955!

Newlyweds! Nalini and I in Paris, 1962

Here are the four I was referring to. One of them is a translation of a song in my native tongue—Malayalam. Before dismissing them as sentimental mush, and advising me to stick to prose, please remember I was in my early twenties when I wrote them!

POEM 1

I filled my salver with all my earthly possessions and gave it to you. What shall I lay at your feet tomorrow? I wonder!

I am like a tree at the end of the flowering summer, a tree gazing at the sky with its lifted branches bare of its blossoms.

But in all my past offerings, is there not a single flower made fadeless by the eternity of tears?

Will you think of it when I stand before you with empty hands, when I take leave of you?

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I dreamt that I lay my head on your lap and that your tender fingers were ruffling my hair, playing the melody of your touch. I looked at your face and struggled with my tears till the agony of unspoken words startled me.

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I thought I had something to say when our eyes met across the meadow.  But you went away. It rocked me day and night like a boat on every wave of the hours. Ah, the words that I wanted to say to you!!! They seemed to set sail in the autumn clouds on an endless quest and bloom into evening flowers, seeking their lost moment in the sunset. They twinkled like fireflies in my heart, to find a meaning in the dust of despair, the words I wanted to say.

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My flowers were like milk and honey and wine. I bound them into a posy with a golden ribbon, but they escaped my watchful care and fled away and only the ribbon remains.

My songs were like milk and honey and wine. They were held in the rhythm of my beating heart, but they spread their wings and flew away—the darlings of my idle hours, and my heart beats in silence.

She was like milk and honey and wine, her lips like the rose of the dawn, her eyes black as the new moon night.  When she reposed on my lap, I struggled to quieten my heart lest I wake her.

But she eluded me.

And silently she floated away and only the ribbon and the dreams remain.

POEM 2

You came into my life like a bolt of lightning,

And strummed silent songs on the strings of my heart.

I lit the lamp of love at the altar of my hope

And I lay at your feet a garland of pearls.

But the pearls were really my tears.

Then I waited for you, straining to hear your footsteps.

But you never came,

You who once came into my life like a bolt of lightning.

POEM 3

What is the use of fragrance if

The waft of wind does not take it far,

Far into the deepest recesses of the soul

And tickle it into limitless bliss?

What is the use of nectar, if

The buzzing, flitting bee does not

Visit the luscious flower and make it blush?

POEM 4

The dream of my heart,

Please let me bid you farewell!

My lyre has no music,

And I cannot strum it anymore;

It is slowly disintegrating.

The dream of my heart,

Please let me bid you farewell.

Before the dark and ominous waves of time

Sink my frail boat of life.

But since I am poor,

I have nothing to give you to remember me by.

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Good news pilgrims: English language is continuing to grow day by day.  Five words that I came across last week, words whose existence I have not been aware of:

Unmissable, Deplatforming, Partisanized, Analogizing and the last from none other than Jake Tapper, Exemplating. I am sure he meant exemplifying, but who knows??!!

Words, words, words

There is a scene in Hamlet where the prince wanders around the castle reading a book. Polonius sees this and the following dialogue ensues.

Pol. What do you read, my lord?

H. Words, words, words.

Pol. What is the matter, my lord?

H. Between who?

Pol. I mean, the matter you read.

In last week’s column I was, in a way, dealing with the use (or abuse) of words. Being a verbivore, having had a romance with words for longer than I care to remember, I was ruminating on them, and how we use words. Words are the building blocks of a sentence, and thus communication. A language grows with the addition of new words, and these days it appears that new words are being coined with careless abandon.

So, how many words are there in the English language? During a project in 2010, looking at words in digitized books, researchers from Harvard and Google estimated a total of 1,022,000 words; and that number would have grown by several thousand since then.  The second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary published in 1989 contains full entries for 171,476 words in use at that time!!

The number, a million plus, would be even higher if we add homonyms, words that spell the same but have different meaning. There are at least 6,200 homonyms. The word ‘run’ has 645 different meanings with other words. e..g. run for, run into, run amok …… The word ‘put’ has 270. I admit that I have not actually counted the entries. I trust google!

The shortest word in English is the personal pronoun  ‘I’. The longest word is the name of a railway station in Wales:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

The word means, “The church of St Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave.” It is so long that people call it “Llanfair PG Station”.

The longest personal name I thought was Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Sr. But my dear friend Burke Strelkhe alerted me to the fact that it is only an abbreviated version of a name with a 747-letter last name!!! Here also I admit that I did not count. But I trust Guinness Book of Records. The full name is:

Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegel­steinhausen­bergerdorff­welche­vor­altern­waren­gewissenhaft­schafers­wessen­schafe­waren­wohl­gepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­vor­angreifen­durch­ihr­raubgierig­feinde­welche­vor­altern­zwolfhundert­tausend­jahres­voran­die­erscheinen­von­der­erste­erdemensch­der­raumschiff­genacht­mit­tungstein­und­sieben­iridium­elektrisch­motors­gebrauch­licht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraft­gestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartig­raum­auf­der­suchen­nachbarschaft­der­stern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neue­rasse­von­verstandig­menschlichkeit­konnte­fortpflanzen­und­sich­erfreuen­an­lebenslanglich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­vor­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartig­raum Sr.

Adolf Blaine was a typesetter who was born in Hamburg. He died in Philadelphia in 1997. I wonder how he managed to fill out official forms where the ‘name in full’ is required!! Wikipedia and google would provide interesting insights about this particular name and what it means, if you are interested.

And here I thought that Parameswaran Sukumaran Nayar is too long for comfort!

When you look at words, you realize that sometimes they do not exactly tell you what they mean. For instance, Bombay duck is actually a fish native to the waters in and around Mumbai. China syndrome does not necessarily have anything to do with China. Yorkshire pudding is not a pudding at all. It is a savory dish sometimes called popovers here. And the Dutch seem to have been especially subjected to this kind of anomaly. For instance, A Dutchman’s pipe is a flower.

Dutch uncles come to your house and give gratuitous advice. A Dutch treat is where you pay for your share of food in a restaurant, instead of totaling the bill and sharing it.  (I have treated this in some detail in my book “Subtext: A Whimsical Look at Men (and Women too) and Manners”. I believe I have identified over a dozen such uses involving the Dutch. (You are invited to go to Amazon and get a copy. You will make me richer by 2 dollars.)

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Charles Blow

Only regular readers of the New York Times would recognize the name. Blow is an American journalist, commentator, op-ed columnist and an anchor for the Black News Channel. He was also a former graphic director of the Times and art director of National Geographic.

In 2015 he wrote his autobiography “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”. It became a best seller “because it is moving, ‘bold and affecting’ and ‘subtly powerful’.”

Later on, six-time Grammy award winning jazz musician and composer Terence Blanchard wrote an opera based on Blow’s book. The opera tells a poignant story about a young man’s journey to overcome a life of trauma and hardship. The opening night of the 2021-22 season at Metropolitan Opera turned out to be a historic occasion. It was the first opera on that stage by a black composer in the institution’s 138-year history. The build up to the opening night was nothing short of frenetic. Blow’s own reactions are beyond the scope of this blog. If you are interested go to yesterday’s ‘Commentary’ in the NYT. It is a fascinating read.

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I suppose a musical ensemble could perform anywhere—convenient. But on a violin? Yes, you read it right. On the 18^th of September a giant violin floated down the Grand Canal in Venice.

“The violin is a sign of Venice restarting after the lockdown”, said Livio De Marchi, a venetian artist who conceived the idea last year.

NUMBERS

2000. The number of pregnant women among the Afghan refugees at Ramstein base in Germany.

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700,000. The US coronavirus death toll despite wide availability of vaccines.