My Words Trickle Down

O hai LJ. Sorry I've been away so long. I've even failed in my stated intention to mirror the things I post up on mhuzzell.wordpress.com. I'll catch up on that at some point soon (though I'll probably back-date them, so I don't know whether that would put them in your feeds or not).

In the meantime, here's a half-formed set of musings about a film I watched a month ago, pulled from the clutter of half-formed writings that are currently languishing all over my desktop:

( I have finally (finally!) watched 'Mononoke Hime', and I have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings about it )

I was born in the '80s, which means I was a child during the '90s. I remember them, but with the perspective of a child; I saw things on the news; I overheard grownups and parroted their opinions. I didn't start to become politically aware in my own right until the early '00s, and didn't start to become an 'activist' until midway through university, by which point the "Coalition of the Willing" was deeply entrenched in Iraq. My first exposure to the broad Left, then, was the Stop the War movement. (I was also involved, actually rather more heavily, in an Injustice of the Day student campaigning group, but as they were mostly of an age with me, they didn't have the depth of campaign experience that is relevant for what I want to discuss here.)

StW, or at least my acquaintances within it, seemed to be made up mostly of anti-nuclear activists, longtime pacifists (obvs.), socialists (or at least sellers of The Socialist Worker), and the regrouped remnants of the anti-globalization movement. Most of these, having found common purpose, seemed to share a collective scorn for the 'Identity Politics of the '90s', which had so divided and derailed the movement from fighting the real enemy: capitalism, neoliberalism, the military-industrial complex. My memories of the '90s include an awful lot of people emphasising their racial, gender, and sexual identities, and terms like 'political correctness' and 'affirmative action' were forever on everyone's lips; and so I took these older campaigners at their word -- their narrative certainly made a lot of sense, and helped me explain to myself how I could have reached the age of 18 without knowing that living socialists existed in the West, or how academics like Fukuyama could write bullshit like "The End of History".

However, I am starting to grow skeptical of my activist elders. I know that, for all intents and purposes, I just wasn't there in the '90s, and therefore can't really comment on what it was like, but when I see things like discussions about women's safer spaces within the occupy camps repeatedly derailed by comments like "let's not let this movement get bogged down in identity politics like the protest movements in the '90s did", I start to wonder. Did they? WERE the '90s a time when anti-capitalists laid down their ideologies in order to focus on the colour of their skin or the composition of their genitalia, as the mainstream narrative would have us believe? Or was it simply that women, people of colour, and queer people of all acronyms looked around them and saw that the broad left, just like the rest of society, was silencing their voices and their concerns, patronizing them, and telling them that their problems would be dealt with after whatever other big problem they were protesting had been solved? The '90s, after all, saw the rise of the anti-globalization movement, in opposition to the towering capitalist globalization movements coming out of the most powerful world government and inter-government agencies of the day (and now), as well as the same old pacifists and hard-bitten anti-nuke campaigners and all the other "yes that's what I've been saying all along" fringe activist movements that are always with us. They clearly weren't a time when no one was focusing on ideology. But, you know, what do I know. I was only a kid; I wasn't really "there".

Day 13 – Your favorite writer

As seems to be the case with most of my answers, I'm not sure I really have one. I like a lot of different authors a lot, and there are certainly some I could name as favourites in particular areas. David Foster Wallace has my favourite prose style. Katharine Kerr does my favourite world-building. Joseph Heller provided my favourite neologism / metaphor for my frequent angst. &c. But an overall favourite? That is tough.

I mean, should this be the person whose work I have most consistently enjoyed (the oft-mentioned David Whiteland), or the author of the book I like the most? And if the latter, how on earth do I pick from my full two-hands-ful of favourite books to select a favourite author? Well, I think I might have a guess. I'm gonna say: John Steinbeck. Even though I don't love, or even like, all the things of his I've read -- and, he having been so prolific, haven't read even close to everything he wrote -- but because:

a) He's the only author who has written more than one (fully two) of the books I consistently name when asked to list my favourite books

b) Looking ahead in the meme, those are going to be the books I'll want to name as answers to later questions, for consistency's sake. Because apparently I care about intra-meme consistency now.


( Upcoming Days )

In non-book-meme news, it seems to have become autumn now. The festivals are over, Edinburgh is breathing a collective sigh of relief, the previously-mentioned buddlejas have retreated their pretty purple blossoms from their long brown fingers that poke (now ominously once more) over the walls of abandoned lots, and the weather has turned cold again. Not cold-cold, to be fair, but pretty damn nippy. And it is still August, at least for the rest of today. WTF, Scotland?

There are some ways in which central NC weather and east-coast lowland Scotland weather are not that different. In both cases, winter is short and changeable and generally only lasts from December to January. Autumn stays autumnal well through November, and the winter breaks and things start blooming in February. However, while NC summer lasts from about March through October, Scottish summer lasts from about July to July (if that). Just a long long spring and a long long autumn. Some years, the winter's so mild and the summer's so cool that it feels like the years just fade from spring to autumn and back again.

... I have more Thoughts about the weather, but I have to go to work -- lucky you!

After an overnight drive down from chilly Massachusetts, I am back in North Carolina for a week, and oh my goodness it is lovely. Not just because the weather right now is comparable to a warm summer day in Scotland, but to be back among the trees at what must be their most beautiful time of year. I've written at (possibly excessive) length, in the past, about how much I miss being around trees all the time. It's hard to describe most of the time, but with their added aspect of seasonal beauty, it suddenly seems easier.

Autumn trees are lovely everywhere you go, of course, but in many places they're a view you come upon exceptionally: pretty little stands of trees on suburban lanes and in city parks and gardens. The UK countryside is stripped almost bare. Here, though, you can look in any direction, anywhere you go, and unless you are looking at some particular human edifice, or the ocean, you will be met by a stunningly beautiful array of orange, yellow, and dark red leaves, picked out by the dark green of loblolly pines and the light green of deciduous leaves that have not yet turned. Everywhere you look. Even in the awful awful suburbs, most of the time.

Even in the awful awful suburbs, though, there are little forest parks. The city of Raleigh has exterminated nearly all of its woodlands, but on the grounds of its newly remodeled art museum, it has put down trails and interspersed art installations among some of its remaining trees. My dad and brother and I went and walked around them yesterday. It was very pretty, although most of the installations were unremarkable -- with two exceptions. In one, the artist had painted designs inspired by European floral patterns (as usually seen in cloth) onto the pavement of the paths, and according to the sign, beneath the final obscuring coat of paint they'd written out the names of all the invasive species of plants now local to the area.

The other was more remarkable, if somewhat less thought-provoking. Named the "Cloud Chamber", it was a low hut set under a fairly open stand of trees, small and round, with nothing inside except three benches set against the white-painted walls. We entered by ducking through a small door, and upon closing it found ourselves in what seemed like total darkness, but for a pinprick of light coming in from the peak of the roof. As our eyes adjusted, though, we began to see the shadowy impressions of leaves and branches on the walls, which brightened and sharpened as our pupils dilated further. They were the branches high above, refracted down through the tiny hole like the exposure in a pinhole camera. It was, to put it simply, really, really cool.

We had not intended to go into the museum itself, but ended up going in briefly, towards the end of our visit. I hadn't been in since it was remodelled, and it was weird to see the collections of paintings and statues I'd grown up visiting and was so accustomed to seeing in their older, more traditional settings set around the new, very modern, brightly lit, open-plan museum. I was also interested to see a new collection they'd added (a "generous donation from the Hearst family"), which consisted of several artifacts of various antiquity from western and central Africa -- interested not just in the objects themselves, but in how they were displayed.

It seems customary for most American and European museums, when displaying items whose specific origin is unkown, to merely list the geographic and temporal origins of the piece. These provided this information, but on every single piece, using the same format as the info cards accompanying the modern paintings and sculptures, in the space for the artist's name they'd written 'Artist Unknown'. Explicitly displaying each piece, then, not as a cultural artifact but as a piece of art, the work of an individual, albeit an uknown one.

I was reflecting happily on this* when I turned the corner to find a display of the museum's older collection of ancient Greek and Roman statues, and saw that they had not been similarly labelled -- their info cards merely stated the name of the statue and what was known of its geographic and temporal origins. This is, of course, quite usual, as mentioned, but in a museum that was making such and effort to mark out the forgotten artists in its other collections, the double standard was jarring. Is it simply that "everyone knows" that a marble statue will have been sculpted by an artist, and thus the fact of the artist's existence, and our ignorance of their identity, need not be mentioned -- yet the artists themselves are a forgotten element in the shaping of the captured artworks we've looted from the places we've conquered? Probably so. But I can't help but think the point would've been driven further home by including the 'artist unknown' label on the pieces of murky European antiquity, and not just African.

* Though with qualifying thoughts about the veneration of 'the artist' and concepts about "what makes art art". 'Art' as 'item produced by an artist' (as opposed to, e.g., and artisan or lay person), for example. But that is another story.

Growing up, the idea of this holiday always bothered me. Something about a day of feasting devoted, even according to its own mythology, to celebrating the initial generosity of a group of people who were later systematically exploited by the very people they'd helped just never sat quite right with me.

Then, when I was fourteen, I went to a hippie school who I thought might take a similar viewpoint to mine, and maybe boycott the whole affair, but instead they made an even bigger fuss over Thanksgiving than any other group I'd yet encountered. Their view of it was more abstract; not much to do with the history of the holiday, and a lot to do with being thankful for various things. It was essentially a harvest festival, which made a lot of sense for a community that grew most of its own vegetables.

My next school (which, incidentally, also produced a lot of food for itself) took a similar view, and by this time I was happy enough to go along with it -- but since graduating, I've slipped back into my old views of things. It helps that I've spent every Thanksgiving since graduation in the UK. I just can't separate the holiday's meaning from exploitation and genocidal wars in my mind, and so I've mostly done my best to ignore it.

All the same, I've been feeling the lack of a harvest festival. Especially here, where by November it gets SO DARK SO EARLY, and the sun rises so late. They say that mid-winter holidays like Christmas are important because of the light levels and the turning of the year and such -- and to keep people's spirits up through the cold dark winter -- but I find November far bleaker than December. Sure, December is the darkest month, but it's also the month when things start to turn and become light again. November is just a rapid decline into darkness.

That, and I'm homesick. I miss my family, and I miss the food of the US at this time. I've been having cravings for gourds that simply aren't available here -- the vast arrays of heirloom squashes and such that are so readily available back home. Pecans. Sweet potatoes. Sure, the latter are available here, but they're somehow not quite as nice when divorced from the context of family and feasting. It seems like there ought to be some sort of celebration happening to stave off the cold and darkness. Maybe not Thanksgiving, but something.

I'm in Brugge, on a congratulations-on-graduating holiday with my mother (who also just graduated, finished her MBA), and my little brother. Enjoying the hell out of the weather. There's been a heat wave all across Europe, which in Scotland translates to t-shirt weather (mostly) during the days, and not-so-chilly-as-usual at night. But here in Belgium, it's actually properly hot, and I don't even need a coat at night! I have been trying to buy a pair of sandals; I've lived so long in the cold that I don't even own any anymore. Still haven't acquired them though, since as usual I fail at shopping.

I'm loving the sights as well. The medieval architecture, yes, and the canals, but also the cultural elements. I have seen several fantastic beards and moustaches, so many that I am wondering if there is some sort of convention happening. We took a touristy boat ride, and the French tourist across from us in the boat had an excellent handlebar moustache, and, as though to emphasise it, wore a shirt featuring a silhouetted longhorn steer. Yesterday we passed a sex shop on the high street, and then a few doors down saw an apparently unrelated chocolate shop whose window display featured three sets of life-sized chocolate breasts.

At the Groeninge Museum, they had a special exhibition about Charles the Bold and the 15th-Century Burgundian court, where I marvelled at the ideology in the information plaques as much as at the displays and artifacts themselves. The descriptions of the extravagant clothes and jewelry were almost more anthropological than historical, describing how the nobles used extravagant displays of wealth to 'legitimise' their power. Most of the descriptions were subtly critical of the legitimacy of monarchal rule in principle, though I'm not sure I could explain precisely how. In a way it seems like that's what one should expect from any modern display of late medieval artifacts, but most that I've seen have simply celebrated the splendour.

The whole thing reminded me of a D&D campaign I've been playing lately, in which the DM is a medieval history scholar and has set our party in Eastern Europe in the same period. We are a party of nobles, and our character alignments ranged from Neutral to Lawful Good (I am playing a Paladin) -- but the whole campaign has emphasised that the life of the nobility is inherently characterised by evil acts. Our characters have been sent out on campaigns to sack towns (on Christmas Eve!) and murder whole monasteries, and thus have grown steadily more Evil until we were railroaded into becoming vampires. In our splendid clothes and shining armour. Oh yes.

Yesterday something happened to me that I don't think is supposed to happen with internet conversations. Though, on consideration, maybe it should.

See, St Andrews has this unofficial online message board for its students. It's called 'The Sinner' in reference to our student newspaper, 'The Saint', but the name is apt enough for its general contents. Besides hosting a few boards for practical things like finding accommodation or buying and selling kicknacks and appliances, its main purpose seems to be as an outlet for the pedantic misanthropy of our overly conservative, overly nerdy student population. I'm sure many of the people who post regularly there, even the more trollish ones, are lovely(ish) people in real life -- indeed, I know several of them personally -- but the standard modes of discourse on the main message board have a way of turning even the politest and most civil people into snide assholes. Myself included, apparently.

An acquaintaince, J, and I had both been posting on a very long and heated thread regarding the recent Gaza Solidarity occupation. I'd posted something in response to one of his posts, which had then progressed into a dialogue between me and another person. He had then made a snarky post reiterating his former points, and referencing the invervening dialogue only in such a way as to totally misconstrue it. I made a snide comment in response.

The next day, passing through the stairwell doors in the library, I saw him face to face. He looked hurt; he blanked me. Later that evening, looking at the thread again, and the timestamps, I saw that he'd made a reply to my snide comment only a few minutes before passing me on the stairs.

Now that the election is good and over -- now that the Almighty Barack Obama has been officially accepted as Saviour Elect, and the faithful across the world lift their voices to the sky to sing His praises -- and, more importantly for my purposes, now that North Carolina has finally called its very close race in favour of Obama, I can share this bit of news that brought me great pleasure, even a little pride, a few days ago.

I had been surfing the news sites (breaking several promises to myself), looking for articles on the election. I stumbled onto this article, which describes how the columnist's Obama-stickered car was keyed outside a gym. Its tone was optimistic, saying that such petty intimidation tactics indicated a sort of juvenile desperation on the part of Obama's Republican detractors. The commenter linked his experience to an apparant wave of anti-Obama vandalism, detailed here.

However, the events detailed in the second article tell a very different story to the one presented by the Guardian journalist. Because, although the majority of the vandalism was undoubtedly from right-wingers, the only incident mentioned with an explicit political message (if the naive innocence of the bear-cub students is to be believed, which I hope to God it is), was the graffiti on the Obama campaign headquarters in Winston-Salem. It read: "Free Palestine" and "liar".

This in a state where my radical contact on the ground claims that "there is no Left in America anymore". Well, maybe not. But I still have the audacity to hope.

Oh! On a final note, something I've been wondering for the last 20 damn months: Honestly, why would the Religious Right back someone whose name means 'Son of Cain'? Don't they read their Bibles? No, don't answer that. We already know what they think 'traditional marriage' means. Apparently it means enough to constitutionally ban homosexual civil rights in three different states. And so the faithful, 'round the world, lift their voices to the sky and sing His praises.

I came to a realisation today, cycling to town in the bright autumn of penetrating sunshine and dazzling cold: this is not my place.

This time three years ago, I was so happy to finally be out of the US that I fell utterly in love with Scotland, and was sure that I would want to live here forever. For most of the last three years I hadn't even considered that I might return. Now I'm so homesick I can't stop thinking about North America.

The tricky thing is that I don't miss the US in the slightest. It's the land itself that tugs me like a magnet. The flora and fauna. I miss forests, and individual trees. I miss whole species: cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, hummingbirds; sweetgums, red maples, tulip poplars, even fucking loblolly pines. Someone on our road has planted goldenrod in their front garden, and when I first noticed it, I actually stopped dead in my tracks just to touch it. Even the air here seems foreign to me, sometimes, for all that I'm actually pretty acclimatised. I can feel it deep in my core; I miss my homeland with my whole body.

Then, of course, there's my family. I guess I was lucky, in this century, to have grown up so close (geographically and emotionally) to such a large extended family. But that kind of strength of 'home' really gets into your bones. I think the idea of it sustained me, somewhat, when I first left. But these days, I just want to get back to my family, my forests, my roots. Except that I really, really don't want to return to the United States.

One of these days I will get 'round to making real entries again, but for now you will just have to content yourselves with my commentaries on things what I have recently seen in the news these days of late.  Today, it's The Independent's investigation and campaign on tipping, and the unfair practices and pun opportunities thereof.

The article describes how many restaurants are fleecing the customers and fucking the staff by keeping large percentages of tips for themselves, or else using tips to top up wages to comply with the legal minimum, when the poor dear customers thought the service charge was all going to that nice 'server' who'd waited on them.  

Now, I currently work as a chef in a small café, where tips are collected in a dish on the counter and shared out between all staff at the end of the day.  It's never much -- usually £2 or £3 each, seldom more than £4; certainly not enough for the manager to consider using it to top up wages -- but it is fair.  

However, the last restaurant I worked in was much fancier.  Food prices, and therefore tips, were much higher, and were not shared out by the waitstaff.  I was making $7/hr. washing dishes, and the chefs made only two or three dollars per hour more than me.  The pinches meseras* (technical term), meanwhile, made only $2.35/hr in wages, but still made far more than any of us in the kitchen.  To have had them on minimum wage, as The Independent would call for, would be grossly unfair to the kitchen staff, unless they were to pool and share out their tips -- but then, this is another practice that The Independent's campaign seems rather critical of, since it is the primary means by which managers and owners are able to steal tips from staff.

The only really fair way to handle things, as far as I can tell, is the way I hear they do it in Australia: that is, not doing it.  They don't have a tipping culture, staff are paid much higher basic wages, and any tips on top of that are simply incidental, or for particularly good service, and not to be expected or relied upon.  Like the jar on our café's counter.  Seriously, what kind of bullshit system is this?


* In a recent conversation on how we tend to get pigeonholed in summer jobs, based on whatever experience we happen to have, a friend told me he had only ever been barstaff.  I replied that I had only ever worked in kitchens, to which he said "ah, then you are my natural enemy!"  If you don't get it, then go get a real job, you hippie.