We're planning a week's holiday in Peru next month. It's fairly complicated slapping together an itinerary since we're trying to slip a bit off the tourist track to visit a cousin who lives and works there as a medical missionary. We're also hoping to take in Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Lima and Paracas. It looks like a busy week, with a lot of time on the road, but I don't want to stay out longer and you don't get to Peru all that often.
My Amazon order(s) finally shipped from the US. 12 more books on the way. What bothers me about this is that they kept sending me requests to authorise further delays, then they shipped them separately (apparently), one day apart. Somehow they must have partitioned my order by delays. But still, looking at the shipping and handling, it looks like the cost is not greatly increased. Overall, it costs about $5 per title to get books shipped to Brazil by their intermediate-speed method. So, looks like mid-March.
Jumping the queue (and even Hobsbawm), my next read will be in Portuguese. It's called Lagrimas na chuva by Sergio Faraco, and it's about his travels to Moscow in the mid-1960s as a student and guest of the Communist Party. I came across a review of this (in Portuguese) in the monthly literary review Rascunho, which my teacher usually brings to me to help me get more in tune with Brazilian writing.
I finished reading the Neal Ascherson book this weekend. Measured in terms of recent reads, this was something of a record. I just kept at it because it was so interesting. A reflection on how Scottish history has impacted modern Scottish culture and politics.
My main complaint was that this book about Scottish identity didn't really have a lot of Scots in it. The poltical and cultural elite, for the most part, and a few fleeting references to engagement with the people, but by and large it didn't get into how average Scots view their status in Britain and the world (the vote for a Scottish parliament serving as a proxy for this?). I didn't really sense how the reality of life in Scotland today, as lived out in the big cities, but also in the smaller towns, bore any relation to the past. How much of life in Scotland today feels uniquely Scottish, and how much seems generically British.
But that is surely a minor objection to this otherwise wonderful book that visits key moments in Scottish history and paints them into the landscape. It made me want to go walking, to visit the wild places where the Covenanter memorials are located; to climb Dunadd, ancestral seat of Scottish kings. To visit the parts of Scotland that are still "wild" Scotland; that aren't paved, measured, engineered, subsumed into the efficiencies of modern British life.
I have some Scottish heritage, but I don't really identify with it - it would be centuries old, as opposed to my more recent and tangible hyphenated American past. But just the same I could not help in reading this book to want to dig deeper into the connections of place to identity.
I attended a lecture not long ago on microhistory. A broader history told in terms of a smaller place. While reading Ascherson, I thought of Claudio Magris' Microcosms - an interesting realisation given that both are journalists and have written a similar sort of book. I'd be curious to read Ascherson's book on the Black Sea.
We watched Minority Report on Saturday night. Enjoyable film. It's no Blade Runner, but the similiarities - the dystopian cities, the high-tech handling of data - made me think of the two side by side. Worst parts for me were the car factory scene - strangely out of place and Terminatoresque - and Anderton's failure to realise how easily he would be tracked when he started to run. "Everybody runs," he said. Echoes of Logan's Run. It showed his faith in the inevitable functioning of the system just after he had started to question it. Slightly offputting.
My English-language book is now Neal Ascherson's Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (review) (LRB Review (reg req'd)). I was sitting on the sofa, listening to Brendel play Schubert sonatas, reading about the Highland landscape I've walked through and thinking how very far from Europe we are and how much one American associates Europe with home.
My first read from the latest set of books ordered from Amazon was Small is Beautiful by Fritz Schumacher. Subtitled "Economics as if People Matter," the book has a reputation as one of the first texts calling attention to uncontrolled growth in pursuit of economic profit. In truth I found this book neither all that interesting or all that relevant.
I concede - this book is 30 years old, Schumaker is long dead and the nationalised British coal industry is not the meaningful example it once might have been. But the original book really doesn't seem as though it was aimed specifically to address the concern of its subtitle. The introduction points out that it is really a collection of essays edited together with a little commentary. In fact, there really isn't a coherence of the chapters.
The concept that sticks in my craw the most is that of intermediate technology. If you don't have heaps of money to buy the latest technology, and if you've got lots of manpower around, well, who needs the latest technology? But in order to compete on this basis, you need to take into account non-economic factors, which you can be sure won't be considered by all comers. Thus the only way to compete is not to play by the same rules.
From another angle, Schumaker writes that the sense of fulfillment gained from doing useful work is an important element of psychic wellbeing, and that economies with large unemployment could do better by allocating work more broadly, even if it means a reduction in efficiency and a lowering of average wages. Using a scale of technology appropriate to the work available keeps more people in work.
I suppose this is a reasonable objective in a population that lives modestly and sustainably. But at times I find it hard to fathom how you could ever do this in practice. You need to balance off the greed that destroyed the commons. And since the fulfillment of work is a relative concept (would people really be happy if they ploughed a smaller patch and earned a smaller packet? Depends on the haves and have nots, I gather), I had trouble envisioning how this proposal would work. Schumaker says he's not talking to me...he's talking about the majority world where so many people have no work. I dunno. I just dunno.
A final concept I'll mention here is the size of the workplace. A man should be able, working over time, to own his own workplace and means of production. This makes more sense to me. He's talking in 1973 terms, but he proposed that there be more £5,000 workplaces and fewer £50,000 ones. Less technology, more work. If only one could be happy and make a sufficient living using one's own means.
I don't want to totally slate this book. Interesting essays; thought-provoking at times, but it wasn't the call to arms I thought it might be. Maybe the title can be recycled.
As for my other Amazon order, I've recently received two e-mails asking me to approve lengthy delays for all but two of the titles. This can't be right, but I am not in a hurry, so decided to postpone rather than cancel. The main culprit seems to be a copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I would be mighty surprised if this was out of print.
We enjoyed our too-short visit to Buenos Aires, and arrived home to learn that we could have stayed a couple of extra days, which would have been just perfect.
BA has visibly suffered a lot in the 15 months or so since the economy melted down (I could say "went south", but you can't get much further south, and it's not PC and all that, either). The banks are open, but they look ready to batten down the hatches at any moment - doors open through barricade armour, plate glass windows are completely covered, one man is always standing by the door.
The streets are full of graffiti that is particularly welcoming to 'yanquis' and international organisations like the IMF and World Bank. Many businesses have just closed down, including some of those our tourist guides say are worth the effort to visit. There are beggars in the streets, but not as many as I had expected. The streets seem a bit grubby and run down.
Against that backdrop, we did have an enjoyable weekend. BA is not a city of sights; more a city that welcomes you to live in its culture. There is a wonderful cafe (Tortoni) with a long literary history. The seat of the Argentine people is remarkably compact - the cathedral and the Casa Rosada are a short stroll apart. I was surprised at how accessible the Casa Rosada is - a row of low barricades is all that keeps the people out. Maybe this is because the President is seldom in residence there.
We took in a tango show at one of the more famous venues. Very enjoyable, if very staged. Fantastic music and wild, high-kicking and twirling dancing (it's scary to see the stiletto heels pass between the gents' legs).
And the rest of the time we spent walking around, enjoying the atmosphere. It does feel a lot like Paris in places (as it is said to). I was last there in the autumn, and this visit left me with a strong desire to go back (or go to Paris) when the weather cools and the leaves are blowing and a carafe of red wine can take the edge off - a good book, some red wine, the coziness of a cafe. The return call of BA.
I got back to work on Monday and found that Tuesday was to be a holiday. If we had left on Friday instead of Thursday, I could have taken the same one day of vacation and we would have been free to spend all day Sunday hanging out around the antiques market in San Telmo, which could have been the highlight of the weekend if we had had more than an hour for a quick tour around and a slug of strong coffee.
BA felt very much like a place that was striving to hold itself together, and it seems that the common bonds of culture are what will probably allow this to happen, even if the economy is still a long way from full recovery. You can't imagine a place that feels as together as BA allowing itself to carry on down the tank for too long.
We are off to Buenos Aires for the weekend. I was last there in 1991, and I imagine things are very different today. When I was last there, the austral (as it was then) had just been pegged to the dollar (at a rate of A$10,000:1). It was the first time I ever had a million of any currency. Of course, that was all of US$100. Yet there was a sense of emergence from spiraling inflation and crisis. There was little talk of economic chaos. People were enjoying life.
In the decade since, Argentina has sold off its patrimony (airline, oil company, telecoms), chasing a financial policy that was only sustainable if they had used the money to stabilise and modernise their economy. It was a big gamble that failed spectacularly. What I read today is sobering. Dire poverty and starvation in a land of plenty. Some green shoots, perhaps. Small signs of hope in the ruins of promises laid low by political incompetence and toeing the neoliberal line.
Nevertheless, we are going to celebrate. A cheap holiday in other people's misery? I prefer to think of it as a brief look in at the culture, which one prays will endure the hardships. We are celebrating my birthday (36), and our anniversary (3 years). Last year we picked Scotland, returning to the site of our wedding. The year before it was a day-trip to France and a romantic lunch in Boulogne
Jorn Barger has done it again, linking to the treasure trove of publications by Anthony Judge at his site.
In this essay from 1996, Judge takes on the dimensions of work, in search of "engagement." "Engagement", he writes, "is essentially about 'psychic income' -- which is only in some cases directly commensurate with monetary income."
It is time to consider the organization of society in terms of other dimensions that might offer more people more opportunities. Rather than vainly endeavouring to "create new jobs", this would mean recognizing "existing forms of engagement" which already contribute to vital aspects of sustainability that are not measured by GNP. Voluntary association activity is one of them. The issue is how the old lady sitting alone for hours in a village square can be appreciated and rewarded by the community -- as she is in an Italian village!
I like this comment as much for the image of the old lady, which strikes a powerful chord in my memory, as for the idea of re-ordering society to value the non-monetary contributions people choose to make. I'm looking forward to a leisurely browse through Judge's oeuvre over the days to come.
Via Slashdot, a Mother Jones interview with John Perry Barlow.
I looked through the window at the bright summer's day outside and just for a moment my mind tricked itself into thinking it could see a landscape filled with snow. I miss the winters of my childhood. Crunching through woods filled with snow. Dead twigs sticking through the snow; crunchy leaves beneath.
This is the first time I have "wintered" in the southern hemisphere (apart from a couple of weeks in Australia). Not the first winter without snow - too many winters are that way now.
My Portuguese teacher said that she spent one freezing cold winter in Germany and that was enough for her. She doesn't understand winter the way I do. Maybe she doesn't appreciate the pleasures of the nest. Of settling in and taking a break from the hard work of the growing season. Of the rhythms the seasons impose upon a life, even if these are a vestigial reminder of a recent past when we still had to work with nature to sustain ourselves over the fallow seasons. Of hearty food, of soups, of cassoulet and red wine.
It's 90+ degrees here in Brazil, but February is still winter in my mind.
I finished reading Antonio Skarmeta's Nao foi nada yesterday. My second book read in Portuguese. And I enjoyed it, although it calls to attention the long row I still have to hoe when it comes to vocabulary.
Now it's back to the Hobsbawm book. Yes, I should be reading South American literature, but I'm 50 pages into Hobsbawm, and enjoying it.
I came across a website in French today and was impressed with how much I could manage - not from Portuguese, but from my aging study of French. I can probably hack my way through French, Portuguese and Spanish these days. None yet fluent, but all with potential.
I dream of getting these three and Italian before I am 40.
We rented and watched Iris this past weekend. An enjoyable film, but not what we were expecting. More memoir than biopic. Neither as funny nor as sad as I thought it might be (not that we needed a stomach-turning weepie after the Shuttle disaster on Saturday). I think it was because you were expected to gain your affinity for Iris through the flashback scenes (and a couple of brief present-day scenes to show how sharp she was and how she had become) that you never really felt for the Judi Dench part of the character as you might have if you had spent more time with the older couple. In effect, the early days were filler, designed to let you laugh a little between bouts of full-on Alzheimer.
I loved the scenes of their house. Knowing that John Bayley is still quite productive, I was surprised to see it depicted as slipping into decrepitude. I wondered if that was really the case - a house with two writers who pay so little attention to their surroundings. Or if, perhaps, it was meant to show how hard a time Bayley was having in coping with Iris' illness. I would have expected more donnish housekeeping from him, even to the point of having some help when things got rough (unless two professors/writers can't make ends meet as pensioners).
I was impressed with Kate Winslet's performance. Because she had the responsibility for bringing Iris to life, I thought she had a juicier role than Dame Judi and she did a good job of it. Although I might have been swayed by the gratuitous nudity. Oh. I also thought Hugh Bonneville did a nice job of being effete and awkward to the point of annoying, but still pulled it off with an element of charm.
We sat out on the patio on Sunday afternoon, enjoying a brilliantly sunny and warm afternoon. As I looked up in the sky I could see the image of the shuttle breaking up and falling to earth replaying again and again in my mind.
Of all of the coverage, the most touching to me was to watch the engineers in the "technical briefing" express their own frustration and sadness, question their own judgement and wonder, choking back tears, what they had missed on their "bad day." CNN went on and on (admirably commercial-free), but the paucity of facts led quickly to a sterility of coverage that seemed unnecessary. A silent image of the shuttle breaking up. A flag at half-staff. A mission patch in a field in east Texas. These things say more than any amount of off-the-cuff commentary a studio presenter can piece together to string along a trickle of information on a long and sombre afternoon.
In some regards it reminded me of the 11 September coverage. In the absence of information, the mind wants to wander. But in times of tragedy it seems that speculation only feeds the media frenzy. Tragedy is the worst type of fuel for the media.
In the exploration of space there is a great human story, but it quickly loses its freshness if rehashed time and again for the sake of the spectacle. We need to learn to switch it off and leave it to our imagination and to our aspirations.