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It damn sure suffocates me

(27 March 1993)

Although being an American in England is probably one of the least foreign cultural experiences an expatriate could find, it is still amazingly different -- and, to me, unsettling. The pervasive class consciousness, the social hierarchy, the sense of "why bother?", the lack of initiative, the constant "can't-do" attitudes -- these are things that seem to come up nearly every day.

This seems to be a particularly troubled time in England. The Independent newspaper recently included a special five-page section called "What's gone wrong?" examining a spreading sense of despair in Britain. A recent poll shows that half the people here wish they could emigrate. The monarchy is in trouble (you probably heard); less than 3 percent of the people here attend the Church of England regularly and there was a deeply bitter falling out over women priests (favorite headline: "Vicars In Knickers"); the pound is in the tank and 80 percent of the voters think John Major is a lousy prime minister.

From Martin Jacques' column in the Sunday Times of 28 Feb 93: "One is loath to make apocalyptic judgments, but it would seem that, at the beginning of the 1990s, Britain is experiencing a crisis of historic proportions ... we tend to ignore it because the decline has been borne so stoically. There has been nothing like the trauma that the Americans experienced in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, or the Russians with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this sense of reserve should not be allowed to conceal the agony or disorientation of the experience ... We have never found a way of displaying our grief, of drawing a line, of making a new start. We remain a country that has lost its past and never found a future.... The problem is that we have never learnt how to make a fundamental change. We are too steeped in continuity. We are too hierarchal and deferential, a society which has not engendered sufficient points of authority, creativity, energy and initiative. Unless we find some way of tackling this legacy, then we will continue to decline as an increasingly fraught and unhappy society.

A columnist quoted in the Guardian last week used a different approach to make a similar point: "The England cricket team-failing, morally shifty, globally insignificant, distracted by irrelevant attention to demeanor, run by discredited leaders insolently continuing in office-may not be a credit to the nation, but is a perfect reflection of it." Yet another recent column in the Independent talked of young people who have left the country, noting "Most of them left because Britain had worn them down with its depressing outlook and warped priorities." There have been separate magazine covers this year on the failure of Britain's industrial estate and on why the monarchy must end.

The final words of the editorial in the Independent package about what's wrong: "If we feel utter despair, it is because we see no new promise. All our gods have failed."

Brits are known to be naturally reserved and emotionally cool; imagine what they are like with their social system crashing in around them. We have made a lot of good friends here, many of whom I hope will be friends for the rest of my life. Not a one of them is British.

Much of this is probably exacerbated by living in Cambridge, a place that takes itself very seriously, indeed. One is constantly reminded that this was the university where Newton figured out gravity, where the atom was split and the double helix identified. At the very first lecture at Scott Polar, our course director told us "Cambridge is an institution that has been here for 700 years, and it will not change for you." (He also said "If you are not a very different person in June than you are now, then we shall have failed you." He could hardly have guessed how far I would come...)

Undergrads here get automatic overdraft protection on their bank accounts; the colleges employ women to clean up after them, known as "bedders" (for "bed-makers"); Cambridge awards a BA degree after three years (each just 24 weeks long) and an automatic masters (MA) degree accrues two years after graduation. That's right: an MA from Cambridge means nothing, but don't tell these people that. They run the country.

There are 22 people in the cabinet in London; 16 of them are "Oxbridge," that is, graduates either of Oxford or Cambridge. (Mostly Cambridge, since you asked.) The stain of privilege is everywhere here.

Watching (and experiencing) all this has reinforced for me how potent a force culture is. It makes me acutely aware of how strong a sense of community I feel in Anchorage, and how powerfully I identify with the American virtues of egalitarianism, opportunity and initiative. During the Clinton inaugural, the papers here were full of snide commentaries about what a vulgar, show-biz spectacle it was, but one writer (a Brit, Neal Ascherson) seemed to see through that. He said something to the effect that "while all public ceremonies in the US are fertility rites, in Britain they are all ancestor worship." That seems very true to me: for all our rambunctious (yes, and sometimes vulgar) energy, the US still looks forward. Over here, they are always looking back.

The sense of hierarchy, class consciousness and tradition seems suffocating.

It damn sure suffocates me.

England doesn't need Europe, but can't beat Iceland

England, which could not unite over membership in the European Union, now has something to bring them all together: they're angry and humiliated over being knocked out of the European soccer championships by tiny newcomer Iceland. I've seen it before. We lived in England during another low point for the country, in 1992-1993, a time of national angst also marked by athletic failure. It was cricket then, and I made notes about it at the time. I didn't like living in England, and pulled these thoughts together then: 27 March 1993 Cambridge Although being an American in England is probably one of the least foreign cultural experiences an expatriate could find, it is still amazingly different—and, to me, unsettling. The pervasive class consciousness, the social hierarchy, the sense of “why bother?”, the lack of initiative, the constant “can’t-do” attitudes—these are things that seem to come up nearly every day. This seems to be a particularly troubled time in England. The Independent newspaper recently included a special five-page section called “What’s gone wrong?” examining a spreading sense of despair in Britain. A recent poll shows that half the people here wish they could emigrate. The monarchy is in trouble (you probably heard); less than 3 percent of the people here attend the Church of England regularly and there was a deeply bitter falling out over women priests (favorite headline: “Vicars In Knickers”); the pound is in the tank and 80 percent of the voters think John Major is a lousy prime minister. From Martin Jacques’ column in the Sunday Times of 28 Feb 93: “One is loath to make apocalyptic judgments, but it would seem that, at the beginning of the 1990s, Britain is experiencing a crisis of historic proportions ... we tend to ignore it because the decline has been borne so stoically. There has been nothing like the trauma that the Americans experienced in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, or the Russians with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this sense of reserve should not be allowed to conceal the agony or disorientation of the experience ... We have never found a way of displaying our grief, of drawing a line, of making a new start. We remain a country that has lost its past and never found a future.... The problem is that we have never learnt how to make a fundamental change. We are too steeped in continuity. We are too hierarchal and deferential, a society which has not engendered sufficient points of authority, creativity, energy and initiative. Unless we find some way of tackling this legacy, then we will continue to decline as an increasingly fraught and unhappy society.” A columnist quoted in the Guardian last week used a different approach to make a similar point: “The England cricket team—failing, morally shifty, globally insignificant, distracted by irrelevant attention to demeanor, run by discredited leaders insolently continuing in office—may not be a credit to the nation, but is a perfect reflection of it.” Yet another recent column in the Independent talked of young people who have left the country, noting “Most of them left because Britain had worn them down with its depressing outlook and warped priorities.” There have been separate magazine covers this year on the failure of Britain’s industrial estate and on why the monarchy must end. The final words of the editorial in the Independent package about what’s wrong: “If we feel utter despair, it is because we see no new promise. All our gods have failed.” Brits are known to be naturally reserved and emotionally cool; imagine what they are like with their social system crashing in around them. We have made a lot of good friends here, many of whom I hope will be friends for the rest of my life. Not a one of them is British. Much of this is probably exacerbated by living in Cambridge, a place that takes itself very seriously, indeed. One is constantly reminded that this was the university where Newton figured out gravity, where the atom was split and the double helix identified. At the very first lecture at Scott Polar, our course director told us “Cambridge is an institution that has been here for 700 years, and it will not change for you.” (He also said “If you are not a very different person in June than you are now, then we shall have failed you.” He could hardly have guessed how far I would come…) Undergrads here get automatic overdraft protection on their bank accounts; the colleges employ women to clean up after them, known as “bedders” (for “bed-makers”); Cambridge awards a BA degree after three years (each just 24 weeks long) AND an automatic masters (MA) degree accrues two years after graduation. That’s right: an MA from Cambridge means nothing, but don’t tell these people that. They run the country. There are 22 people in the cabinet in London; 16 of them are “Oxbridge,” that is, graduates either of Oxford or Cambridge. (Mostly Cambridge, since you asked.) The stain of privilege is everywhere here. Watching (and experiencing) all this has reinforced for me how potent a force culture is. It makes me acutely aware of how strong a sense of community I feel in Anchorage, and how powerfully I identify with the American virtues of egalitarianism, opportunity and initiative. During the Clinton inaugural, the papers here were full of snide commentaries about what a vulgar, show-biz spectacle it was, but one writer (a Brit, Neal Ascherson) seemed to see through that. He said something to the effect that “while all public ceremonies in the US are fertility rites, in Britain they are all ancestor worship.” That seems very true to me: for all our rambunctious (yes, and sometimes vulgar) energy, the US still looks forward. Over here, they are always looking back. The sense of hierarchy, class consciousness and tradition seems suffocating. It damn sure suffocates me.

“We are against all…

Different eyes on the election

In 2007 the McClatchy Washington Bureau and I (okay, mostly me) had an idea about trying to cover the coming election differently. In addition to the usual fine coverage from the bureau’s political hands, we’d also ask a number of non-journalists to take a look at the proceedings. Keeping with the Internet idiom of that time, we called it “alt.campaign.” (Description here: http://editor.blogspot.com/2007/08/now-playing_22.html)

I selected five or six congtruibutors with distinctly non-journalistic approaches: the 2004 National Champion Slam Poet, a screenwriter pal, a blogger called Citizen Mom and others. The idea was to have their stories intertwine with standard news coverage and add new dimension to a subject – national politics – that was itself very much in flux.

We didn’t put enough energy behind the plan to give it a fair test, but even so the coverage they produced was fresh, lively and informative.

Probably that’s why I’m so interested in the way The New Republic has revived the idea. The first example I’ve seen is Patricia Lockwood’s journey into Trumplandia, which you can find here:https://newrepublic.com/article/131936/lost-trumplandia

It’s both fun and full of illumination. I’ve read a lot about Trump but still found nuggets of real insight here, like the idea of Trump wanting to make America his latest trophy wife. I hope we get to hear a lot of new perspectives like this before Election Day.

"I want more life."

Angel: Life is a habit with you You have not seen what is to come: We have: What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring ? That you or any Being should wish to endure them ? Death more plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn it, The slow dissolving of the Great Design, The spiralling apart of the Work of Eternity, The World and its beautiful particle logic all collapsed. All dead, forever, in starless, moonlorn onyx night. We are failing, failing, The Earth and the Angels. (The sound of a great generator failing. The lights dim.) Look up, look up. It is Not-to-Be Time. Oh who asks of the Orders Blessing With Apocalypse Descending ? Who demands: More Life ? When Death like a Protector Blinds our eyes, shielding from tender nerve More horror than can be borne. Let any Being on whom Fortune smiles Creep away to Death Before that last dreadful daybreak When all your ravaging returns to you with the rising, scorching, unrelenting Sun: When morning blisters crimson And bears all life away, A tidal wave of Protean Fire That curls around the planet And bares the Earth clean as bone. (Pause.) Prior: But still. Still. Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do. I’ve lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but … You see them living anyway. When they’re more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don’t know if that’s just the animal. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough, so inadequate, but … Bless me anyway. I want more life. Angels in America Part Two: Peristroika By Tony Kushner pp 131-132

The New York Times has an editor problem

Like a hungover drunk who swears “Never again,” the Times promises vigilance on anonymous sources every time it gets burned, but drinks again.

Reporters will not quit on their own. This is an editor problem.

It’s up to @deanbaquet and cadre to stop this, and that can only be done by saying “No” a lot more often.

I am worried that Dean seems obtuse about this. Saying “There’s no reason to think” sources manipulate reporters sounds like such a wrongheaded, inside-the-beltway conviction that I despair of real reform.

Based on my experience at a small, aggressive newspaper that maintained an almost-absolute ban on anonymous sources and still won two Pulitzer public services prizes, I can attest to the pressures editors face, and will acknowledge you may lose a few good stories.

The decisive fact is that this alternative is far worse, as the Times has painfully (and repeatedly) learned. Like all who value good journalism and the Times’ indispensable role, I plead for real reform.

Big house but lots of individual design and aesthetic ideas I like very much. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/700-haus-glow-design-group-corrugated-cladding-sheds-trentham-victoria-australia/

Don’t think we have a site quite right for this, but it’s gorgeous.

What happens when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money? I've thought about this often in the past 10-15 years, especially the time I worked as a corporate office of a publicly traded company. We tried hard to incorporate values that transcended profit, and sometimes did, but the legal structure and corporate culture in America both worked against that. The same is true, even amplified, in retail, where the entire system is designed to suck out every fraction of a cent to improve the sacred bottom line. Thus do Wal-Mart and Amazon—both known for abusing employees, brow-beating suppliers and crushing rivals—become highly valued and even celebrated success stories. At its foundation, this system rests on consumer expectations. Will you *really* pay a little more to keep the local hardware store alive as Home Depot looms? Will you wait a few minutes for a locally prepared pizza, or call Papa John's for faster, maybe cheaper, delivery? These are *cultural questions*. People who argue that "the market" demands ruthless competition forget that while we have a capitalist economy, we need not surrender all our values to a capitalist culture. We can (and ultimately, do) determine what matters most by means of things like tax policy, workplace regulation, collective bargaining. Nothing says they must all be driven by the same insistence of Profit Über Alles. Following is a brief exploration of these themes by the CEO of Kickstarter, the popular online crowd-funding platform. I encourage you to read it, and see if you don't agree. Thanks for listening. https://medium.com/@ystrickler/resist-and-thrive-1d36819853ca

Suffocating in the English class system

Dateline: Cambridge, Churchill College 27 March 1993)

Although being an American in England is probably one of the least foreign cultural experiences an expatriate could find, it is still amazingly different – and, to me, unsettling. The pervasive class consciousness, the social hierarchy, the sense of “why bother?”, the lack of initiative, the constant “can’t-do” attitudes – these are things that seem to come up nearly every day.

This seems to be a particularly troubled time in England. The Independent newspaper recently included a special five-page section called “What’s gone wrong?” examining a spreading sense of despair in Britain. A recent poll shows that half the people here wish they could emigrate. The monarchy is in trouble (you probably heard); less than 3 percent of the people here attend the Church of England regularly and there was a deeply bitter falling out over women priests (favorite headline: “Vicars In Knickers”); the pound is in the tank and 80 percent of the voters think John Major is a lousy prime minister.

From Martin Jacques’ column in the Sunday Times of 28 Feb 93: “One is loath to make apocalyptic judgments, but it would seem that, at the beginning of the 1990s, Britain is experiencing a crisis of historic proportions … we tend to ignore it because the decline has been borne so stoically. There has been nothing like the trauma that the Americans experienced in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, or the Russians with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But this sense of reserve should not be allowed to conceal the agony or disorientation of the experience … We have never found a way of displaying our grief, of drawing a line, of making a new start. We remain a country that has lost its past and never found a future…. The problem is that we have never learnt how to make a fundamental change. We are too steeped in continuity. We are too hierarchal and deferential, a society which has not engendered sufficient points of authority, creativity, energy and initiative. Unless we find some way of tackling this legacy, then we will continue to decline as an increasingly fraught and unhappy society.”

A columnist quoted in the Guardian last week used a different approach to make a similar point: “The England cricket team-failing, morally shifty, globally insignificant, distracted by irrelevant attention to demeanor, run by discredited leaders insolently continuing in office-may not be a credit to the nation, but is a perfect reflection of it.” Yet another recent column in the Independent talked of young people who have left the country, noting “Most of them left because Britain had worn them down with its depressing outlook and warped priorities.” There have been separate magazine covers this year on the failure of Britain’s industrial estate and on why the monarchy must end.

The final words of the editorial in the Independent package about what’s wrong: “If we feel utter despair, it is because we see no new promise. All our gods have failed.”

Much of this is probably exacerbated by living in Cambridge, a place that takes itself very seriously, indeed. One is constantly reminded that this was the university where Newton figured out gravity, where the atom was split and the double helix identified. At the very first lecture at Scott Polar, our course director told us “Cambridge is an institution that has been here for 700 years, and it will not change for you.” (He also said “If you are not a very different person in June than you are now, then we shall have failed you.” He could hardly have guessed how far I would come…)

Undergrads here get automatic overdraft protection on their bank accounts; the colleges employ women to clean up after them, known as “bedders” (for “bed-makers”); Cambridge awards a BA degree after three years (each just 24 weeks long) and an automatic masters (MA) degree accrues two years after graduation. That’s right: an MA from Cambridge means nothing, but don’t tell these people that. They run the country.

There are 22 people in the cabinet in London; 16 of them are “Oxbridge,” that is, graduates either of Oxford or Cambridge. (Mostly Cambridge, since you asked.) The stain of privilege is everywhere here.

Watching (and experiencing) all this has reinforced for me how potent a force culture is. It makes me acutely aware of how strong a sense of community I feel in Anchorage, and how powerfully I identify with the American virtues of egalitarianism, opportunity and initiative. During the Clinton inaugural, the papers here were full of snide commentaries about what a vulgar, show-biz spectacle it was, but one writer (a Brit, Neal Ascherson) seemed to see through that. He said something to the effect that “while all public ceremonies in the US are fertility rites, in Britain they are all ancestor worship.” That seems very true to me: for all our rambunctious (yes, and sometimes vulgar) energy, the US still looks forward. Over here, they are always looking back.

The sense of hierarchy, class consciousness and tradition seems suffocating.

It damn sure suffocates me.

Brutalist architecture on display at the I-80 rest stop at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah.

brockbahney

And still no nap…

howardweaver

Look positively Kennedyesque.

The American Revolution isn't finished

A more perfect union. A more perfected union. A work in progress. Here's a fundamental truth about America that I haven't spent much time pondering lately: much of the genius of the constitution and the governance it creates is that the process is self-correcting. It doesn't pretend to describe a perfect union. Instead it articulates ideals and provides a process by which we can reach for them. How could a nation built with the sweat and blood of slaves claim to recognize "that all men are created equal"? Why couldn't women vote? If we're equal, why couldn't people marry whomever they loved? Justice Anthony Kennedy, raised to the Supreme Court by the touch of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, himself demonstrates that process of continual improvement. Here's a splendid passage from his majority opinion on marriage equality last week that didn't get enough attention in the first wave of reaction: “The nature of injustice, is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” That's a wonderful description. There's much more discussion about the notion of perfecting our union here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/28/ten-days-that-made-america-a-better-place

#http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/28/ten-days-that-made-america-a-better-place

Join Brewster <!

#class=#>#ebebeb #ebebebready border= cellpadding="

Illusion as primary experience

Bernard Malamud, from a 1979 interview with USNWR: "Human beings are mysterious, complex, difficult to know. Selves are locked - ultimately solipsistic, private. You are not going to know the whole truth about any one person, ever. There's always the residue of the unknown, both in other people's lives and yours. "Human beings can't see everything. We don't know everything. We explain many things wrong. There is much that eludes us, much that is mysterious about this life and this universe. And therefore, what we are often doing when we are living is guessing what reality is. The more I experience life, the more I become aware of illusion as primary experience."

Drums.

heavyanddissolved

Library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Paul, Austria

Photo Franz Jachim

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