Jean-Marie Le Clézio has to be the most humble Nobel-prize-winning author. Ri and I heard him last Friday, being interviewed by the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. He has the distance of adult wisdom but sees the world through the thrilled eyes of a child. And he has a deep sense of privilege – he’d describe, for example, seeing abuses in colonial Nigeria where his father worked when he was young – a procession of Nigerians led “like a chain gang” to build a colonial official’s swimming pool, the official overseeing them in his shorts and white socks and wide-brimmed hat – and said that while such scenes made him angry he still felt intensely privileged to have born witness to them. He’s fascinated (as you’d expect) by words. Yet in an almost mystical way. “Each word is a world by itself – each word contains a world.” I thought of this the next day when I explored Brooklyn Botanical Garden where each of the plant names contains world upon world of meaning…
Blue Atlas Cedar
Schiedecker Crabapple
Toringo Crabapple
Scarlet Oak
Chinese Fountain Bamboo
Carolina Allspiece
Saucer Magnolia
Weeping Pagoda Tree (it was)
Snow Azalea
Virginia Bluebells
Weeping Hemlock
Hybrid Oak
Narcissus Poeticus
Nodding Virgin’s Bower
Siberian Fritillary
Bosnian Pine
Interrupted Fern
Wild Bleeding-Heart
Nodding Onion
Bloodroot
Eastern shooting star
Wild oats!
And that’s just a handful of them. Material for a multitude of stories.
Le Clézio is anti-affirmation (to the extent he can be "anti" anything!). Rather than novels presenting truths to the world he sees them as birthing questions. He talked about a humanism that isn’t human-centric, that tries to express, as far as possible from within the confines of a human mind, not only the dreams of humans but the dreams of animals and the dreams of plants as well. In the Botanical gardens I thought of all those plants dreaming away at night.
So much more to say…but rushing (comme toujours!) to a wedding in Puerto Rico. To be continued…
Just noticed on posting this that in blog-entry terms it's EWINY's golden anniversary.
Showing posts with label Park Slope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Park Slope. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
New York missive no 40 - Funeral of a foundation
A man wearing sweatpants and a beanie with a skull and crossbones on it stands on the edge of Riverside Park in the snow, playing scales on his trumpet. Is he thinking America’s a different country from this week on, or is he just making music? It doesn’t matter. The notes are clear and hopeful.
At the “funeral” for JEHT Foundation last week, which had to close suddenly as all of its donor’s funds were invested with Bernard Madoff, the air was bittersweet. Combined with the sense of lost opportunity, the fact that one man’s reckless selfishness (or whatever it was) has stifled organizations working to help people that no-one else wants to – young offenders, prisoners, ex-prisoners just released into society – were ripples of relief that years of hard work for human rights is paying off.
Human rights work is a process of patient attrition, step by setback, by step. Then sometimes there are breakthroughs that make every moment worthwhile. They may be small, the release of an innocent man from jail. Or they may, rarely, be sweeping. Obama’s victory was one of those sweeping breakthroughs, the culmination of years and years of brave people speaking out against discrimination and injustice. The fact that the election of America's first black president it is so momentous, however, is also a reminder of how completely perverse entrenched discrimination is in the first place – why should it be historic that a man whose presidential qualities know no bounds wins the presidency?
On the same day as JEHTs funeral, Obama had signed three executive orders, to close Guantanamo, to put a stop to torture and other inhumane interrogation techniques by US officials and to end the use of secret prisons overseas. When he signed the order on interrogation, a group of retired generals were standing behind him. Human Rights First, one of JEHTs grantees, had been working for several years to bring those generals together, across party lines, to speak out against torture and other forms of prisoner abuse. Here's Jane Mayer's look "Behind the executive orders".
The NGOs and foundations that are now seeing their campaign goals attained in rapid succession are re-assessing their priorities. Changes at federal level aren’t going to be replicated in every state. Commitments to strengthen civil liberties don't mean those commitments will be followed through behind prison walls. And the economic crisis means that millions more people are going to need help to keep their and their families’ lives together. There’s a sense though that the net to catch people when they fall and bring them back up again has strengthened.
The day before Martin Luther King day and two days before Obama’s inauguration SY and I were at a WNYC radio event at Brooklyn Museum marking both occasions (and the links between them). One of the panellists happened to be Patricia Williams, who I’d heard speaking in Brooklyn Library back in the heated tumble of the primaries. An implication ran throughout the event that the days of civil rights campaigning, of an outspoken and powerful black voice in the style of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, are over. That Obama’s demonstrated those tactics are outdated and a new approach is needed to achieve change. But Obama’s campaign was about so much more than race that it almost wasn’t about race. That in itself may signify a momentous change, but there are still divides to overcome, present victories are still founded on past tactics (effective and ineffective), the "old" approaches still do have relevance.
The broad human rights landscape is changing though. There's a sense of doors opening and new connections being made. Patricia Williams mentioned how Martin Luther King began to shift towards the end of his life from a necessarily (at the time) narrow civil rights perspective to a wider one based on human dignity. One that takes the fact we are all born equal as a starting point, then looks at the factors enabling or preventing each individual from living a life of dignity. We’re going to see more of that approach, Williams said. The global “Human Dignity Campaign" on poverty & human rights that Amnesty is launching this year is one indication that we will. Andrea Batista Schlesinger from the Drum Major Institute, one of those rare fantastic think tanky-types who are also hysterically entertaining (she could just as easily have made it as a satirical comedian) talked about how all fronts of the social justice movement are interconnected. You can’t look at civil rights without looking at immigration, without looking at trade, without looking at corporate power. This week I’ve felt more privileged than ever to be working on the intersection of business and human rights. It's an embryonic and crucial movement that has its work cut out. (I re-read the last chapter of Joel Bakan's "The Corporation" at the weekend, in which he says “The question of what to do about, and with, the corporation is one of the most pressing and difficult of our time.”).
Back to human rights tactics...narrow interest campaigns are not redundant, they are still critical. The key is linking them up with each other, to apply pressure to power and achieve common goals. Now, in the US at least, the climate’s right to make those connections.
At the “funeral” for JEHT Foundation last week, which had to close suddenly as all of its donor’s funds were invested with Bernard Madoff, the air was bittersweet. Combined with the sense of lost opportunity, the fact that one man’s reckless selfishness (or whatever it was) has stifled organizations working to help people that no-one else wants to – young offenders, prisoners, ex-prisoners just released into society – were ripples of relief that years of hard work for human rights is paying off.
Human rights work is a process of patient attrition, step by setback, by step. Then sometimes there are breakthroughs that make every moment worthwhile. They may be small, the release of an innocent man from jail. Or they may, rarely, be sweeping. Obama’s victory was one of those sweeping breakthroughs, the culmination of years and years of brave people speaking out against discrimination and injustice. The fact that the election of America's first black president it is so momentous, however, is also a reminder of how completely perverse entrenched discrimination is in the first place – why should it be historic that a man whose presidential qualities know no bounds wins the presidency?
On the same day as JEHTs funeral, Obama had signed three executive orders, to close Guantanamo, to put a stop to torture and other inhumane interrogation techniques by US officials and to end the use of secret prisons overseas. When he signed the order on interrogation, a group of retired generals were standing behind him. Human Rights First, one of JEHTs grantees, had been working for several years to bring those generals together, across party lines, to speak out against torture and other forms of prisoner abuse. Here's Jane Mayer's look "Behind the executive orders".
The NGOs and foundations that are now seeing their campaign goals attained in rapid succession are re-assessing their priorities. Changes at federal level aren’t going to be replicated in every state. Commitments to strengthen civil liberties don't mean those commitments will be followed through behind prison walls. And the economic crisis means that millions more people are going to need help to keep their and their families’ lives together. There’s a sense though that the net to catch people when they fall and bring them back up again has strengthened.
The day before Martin Luther King day and two days before Obama’s inauguration SY and I were at a WNYC radio event at Brooklyn Museum marking both occasions (and the links between them). One of the panellists happened to be Patricia Williams, who I’d heard speaking in Brooklyn Library back in the heated tumble of the primaries. An implication ran throughout the event that the days of civil rights campaigning, of an outspoken and powerful black voice in the style of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, are over. That Obama’s demonstrated those tactics are outdated and a new approach is needed to achieve change. But Obama’s campaign was about so much more than race that it almost wasn’t about race. That in itself may signify a momentous change, but there are still divides to overcome, present victories are still founded on past tactics (effective and ineffective), the "old" approaches still do have relevance.
The broad human rights landscape is changing though. There's a sense of doors opening and new connections being made. Patricia Williams mentioned how Martin Luther King began to shift towards the end of his life from a necessarily (at the time) narrow civil rights perspective to a wider one based on human dignity. One that takes the fact we are all born equal as a starting point, then looks at the factors enabling or preventing each individual from living a life of dignity. We’re going to see more of that approach, Williams said. The global “Human Dignity Campaign" on poverty & human rights that Amnesty is launching this year is one indication that we will. Andrea Batista Schlesinger from the Drum Major Institute, one of those rare fantastic think tanky-types who are also hysterically entertaining (she could just as easily have made it as a satirical comedian) talked about how all fronts of the social justice movement are interconnected. You can’t look at civil rights without looking at immigration, without looking at trade, without looking at corporate power. This week I’ve felt more privileged than ever to be working on the intersection of business and human rights. It's an embryonic and crucial movement that has its work cut out. (I re-read the last chapter of Joel Bakan's "The Corporation" at the weekend, in which he says “The question of what to do about, and with, the corporation is one of the most pressing and difficult of our time.”).
Back to human rights tactics...narrow interest campaigns are not redundant, they are still critical. The key is linking them up with each other, to apply pressure to power and achieve common goals. Now, in the US at least, the climate’s right to make those connections.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
New York missive no 10 - Pigeon-feeding, super Tuesday, superbowl
“PIGEONS. DO NOT FEED THEM”. A sign by a patch of grass by fifth avenue around 56th street sums up one of the differences between here and London. In London that same message would have said something like, “Please do not feed the pigeons because of x, y and z. Thank you for your consideration." I leave it to you to decide which you prefer.
Last Sunday I went in search of greenery to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. A little like Hyde Park, it’s snaked by wide walkways that channel flows of weekend joggers, lycra-clad cyclists and horseriders (the latter not in lycra). There are little corners of wilderness too, rustling with busy squirrels. I was tossing up between continuing to an exploration of Greenwood Cemetery, or pacing through the park to Brooklyn Public Library at the northeast corner to hear a lecture by Patricia Williams on whether Obama will get the black vote in the Democratic primaries. I figured that the cemetery will always be there, and that it’s only once in a while that you have a moment of potential in American politics like this one. It was worth it, even just for seeing the impressive façade of the library: a towering stone doorway with gold embossed figures up either side. The lecture hall was only half full but there were still probably 200 people there – old, young, black, white, Asian. Patricia Williams is a Columbia academic and also a contributor to the Nation, and that academic-journalist combination came through in the way she was able to convey a thoughtfully constructed argument with conviction, humour and the creative use of words. If only all academics could communicate like that. I often think that the ideas of uncommunicative academics have an unfair start in life; they’re unlikely to progress far beyond university walls so have limited impact on changing things, even if they deserve to. Williams said she’s “almost 100%” behind Obama and planned to vote for him on “Super Tuesday” (two days later), but that at the same time she has enormous respect for Hillary. She’s infuriated by the way in which the media is trying to turn the contest into a battle between race and gender, and the way that Democrats themselves are in many ways seeing it as a battle, without listening to either side. She described her subway journey to the lecture, when a group of young Obama supporters had come through the carriage waving flags, wearing Obama hats, and calling out “Vote for Obama”. An elderly lady sitting the carriage had lifted her walking stick, "almost menacingly", and shouted “Vote for Hillary”.
A hip-hop fan sitting behind me asked if Obama has somehow skipped up and over a whole range of black issues, from the discrimination exposed by hurricane Katrina to the nascent exploitation revealed by the sub-prime mortgages debacle – and that his success so far as a black nominee can disguise the fact that the civil rights movement still has a long way to go. He’s not ignoring those issues, Williams said, but if he did confront them straight on at this point his rise would have been curbed well before now (which in itself says a lot), and that if he ever does make it to President he won’t be shy of addressing them. It’s true of course, that he’s a lot more than the “black” candidate. There was a strange moment when a woman said that her fear he will be assassinated is almost so strong that it would make her not vote for him. (What's politics all about then?!). The audience began to enter gingerly into a subject that’s partly taboo but partly unavoidable, feeling that by talking about the “if” they could be increasing its chances of becoming a “when”, but knowing that it has to be addressed. Would it provoke shock on the scale of 9/11 if it happened? What would it say about America to itself and the rest of the world? How would America move forward from there?
What I’m increasingly realising though, is that it’s dangerous to talk about America as a whole, as it feeds into its external power in a skewed way. It’s as a whole that America, the idea of America, seduces and will continue to seduce, yet it’s also as a whole that it threatens its own and others’ destruction. As always, reality and the way we try to understand it needs to be brought back down to the experience of individuals in its multiple forms, even when that doesn’t present the clear-cut answers we look for.
Well, “Super Tuesday”’s been and gone, and Hillary and Obama are still neck-and-neck. Watched the start of the results coming through at C’s apartment with a couple of others, eating chilli and chatting above the prattle of the pundits in the background as they tried to make news out of numbers before there was any news. Huckabee kept popping up being interviewed on all the channels as if he had nothing better to do.
Well it’s Super everything here at the moment. The evening of my Brooklyn day was the Superbowl: the New York Giants (underdogs) against the New England Patriots (who had won something record-breaking, like every game in the season). I watched with Ra in West Village pub, and having never seen a game before in my life went from being a complete novice to a screaming fan. The score stayed really low and close, though with a slight lead for the Giants, till 10 minutes before the end when the Patriots scored a touchdown – AGGHHH – and then, less than 2 minutes before the end, the Giants scored – HOOORAY! New York erupted in unanimous cheering, horn-honking and hugging. A novel first date, and a fun one. Which has confused me a bit, but I need to relax into the fact that it’s ok you can juggle encounters here to an extent. After all am making up for lost time.
The previous Friday had been to a party with Ch in a gorgeous apartment that had the effect of filling all the guests with envy and making them depressed about the deficiencies of their own abodes. The woman holding the party is an Australian who’s house-sitting the apartment for friends, which meant it’s full of all their furniture, paintings, books and the kind of global artefacts that say “well-travelled and cultured”. Given that, it was brave of her to throw a party, but then if I was living somewhere like that I’d want to show it off to everyone too. It’s on the fifth floor of an East Village walk-up. From the outside the building doesn’t look like much, but when you come into the flat you immediately feel welcome and at home. It’s one really long thin room, with a sloping roof, wooden floors and an exposed old brick wall. But the wow factor was the fireplace at the foot of the wrought-iron bed, which had a crackling log fire in it that captivated people with its light in the primitive way that real fires do (so rarely do we see them). The party was like two parties: we turned up at 10ish and the ratio of women to men was about 10:1. Ch and I then got into a long, catching-up conversation, then when we decided to go and get another drink, suddenly the ratio had flipped the other way round. Much more like it. I’m not that comfortable surrounded by hundreds of other single and semi-single women, who invariably are also not comfortable around hundreds of other single and semi-single women.
There’s a bit of a fun-serious swing going on with this blog. Last week went to a lecture by an Indian economist based at Columbia, A P. Columbia’s so omnimpresent in this city, or at least in the corners of this city that I’ve been hanging out in – there’s a lot more still to be explored that doesn't touch the university and that the university doesn’t touch. A. P. had a rather infuriating fixation with numbers (though understandable, given his profession). He viewed India’s growth in purely economic terms, arguing that along with that growth, the social divides and difficulties will gradually resolve themselves. Yet despite me not liking much of what he said, I couldn’t help liking him, as he conveyed his calculations with charm and a twinkle in his eye. I liked an analogy he made between India’s stagnant growth prior to the opening up of the economy in 1991, and cricket (what else?!). Just as you will never have the best cricket players if they only compete locally and nationally rather than internationally, you will never produce the best products unless you compete in the global marketplace. The problem with that argument though, is that marketplace competition is often for “cheapest” rather than “best”.
****************************************************************
Last Sunday I went in search of greenery to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. A little like Hyde Park, it’s snaked by wide walkways that channel flows of weekend joggers, lycra-clad cyclists and horseriders (the latter not in lycra). There are little corners of wilderness too, rustling with busy squirrels. I was tossing up between continuing to an exploration of Greenwood Cemetery, or pacing through the park to Brooklyn Public Library at the northeast corner to hear a lecture by Patricia Williams on whether Obama will get the black vote in the Democratic primaries. I figured that the cemetery will always be there, and that it’s only once in a while that you have a moment of potential in American politics like this one. It was worth it, even just for seeing the impressive façade of the library: a towering stone doorway with gold embossed figures up either side. The lecture hall was only half full but there were still probably 200 people there – old, young, black, white, Asian. Patricia Williams is a Columbia academic and also a contributor to the Nation, and that academic-journalist combination came through in the way she was able to convey a thoughtfully constructed argument with conviction, humour and the creative use of words. If only all academics could communicate like that. I often think that the ideas of uncommunicative academics have an unfair start in life; they’re unlikely to progress far beyond university walls so have limited impact on changing things, even if they deserve to. Williams said she’s “almost 100%” behind Obama and planned to vote for him on “Super Tuesday” (two days later), but that at the same time she has enormous respect for Hillary. She’s infuriated by the way in which the media is trying to turn the contest into a battle between race and gender, and the way that Democrats themselves are in many ways seeing it as a battle, without listening to either side. She described her subway journey to the lecture, when a group of young Obama supporters had come through the carriage waving flags, wearing Obama hats, and calling out “Vote for Obama”. An elderly lady sitting the carriage had lifted her walking stick, "almost menacingly", and shouted “Vote for Hillary”.
A hip-hop fan sitting behind me asked if Obama has somehow skipped up and over a whole range of black issues, from the discrimination exposed by hurricane Katrina to the nascent exploitation revealed by the sub-prime mortgages debacle – and that his success so far as a black nominee can disguise the fact that the civil rights movement still has a long way to go. He’s not ignoring those issues, Williams said, but if he did confront them straight on at this point his rise would have been curbed well before now (which in itself says a lot), and that if he ever does make it to President he won’t be shy of addressing them. It’s true of course, that he’s a lot more than the “black” candidate. There was a strange moment when a woman said that her fear he will be assassinated is almost so strong that it would make her not vote for him. (What's politics all about then?!). The audience began to enter gingerly into a subject that’s partly taboo but partly unavoidable, feeling that by talking about the “if” they could be increasing its chances of becoming a “when”, but knowing that it has to be addressed. Would it provoke shock on the scale of 9/11 if it happened? What would it say about America to itself and the rest of the world? How would America move forward from there?
What I’m increasingly realising though, is that it’s dangerous to talk about America as a whole, as it feeds into its external power in a skewed way. It’s as a whole that America, the idea of America, seduces and will continue to seduce, yet it’s also as a whole that it threatens its own and others’ destruction. As always, reality and the way we try to understand it needs to be brought back down to the experience of individuals in its multiple forms, even when that doesn’t present the clear-cut answers we look for.
Well, “Super Tuesday”’s been and gone, and Hillary and Obama are still neck-and-neck. Watched the start of the results coming through at C’s apartment with a couple of others, eating chilli and chatting above the prattle of the pundits in the background as they tried to make news out of numbers before there was any news. Huckabee kept popping up being interviewed on all the channels as if he had nothing better to do.
**********************************************************************
Well it’s Super everything here at the moment. The evening of my Brooklyn day was the Superbowl: the New York Giants (underdogs) against the New England Patriots (who had won something record-breaking, like every game in the season). I watched with Ra in West Village pub, and having never seen a game before in my life went from being a complete novice to a screaming fan. The score stayed really low and close, though with a slight lead for the Giants, till 10 minutes before the end when the Patriots scored a touchdown – AGGHHH – and then, less than 2 minutes before the end, the Giants scored – HOOORAY! New York erupted in unanimous cheering, horn-honking and hugging. A novel first date, and a fun one. Which has confused me a bit, but I need to relax into the fact that it’s ok you can juggle encounters here to an extent. After all am making up for lost time.
**********************************************************************
The previous Friday had been to a party with Ch in a gorgeous apartment that had the effect of filling all the guests with envy and making them depressed about the deficiencies of their own abodes. The woman holding the party is an Australian who’s house-sitting the apartment for friends, which meant it’s full of all their furniture, paintings, books and the kind of global artefacts that say “well-travelled and cultured”. Given that, it was brave of her to throw a party, but then if I was living somewhere like that I’d want to show it off to everyone too. It’s on the fifth floor of an East Village walk-up. From the outside the building doesn’t look like much, but when you come into the flat you immediately feel welcome and at home. It’s one really long thin room, with a sloping roof, wooden floors and an exposed old brick wall. But the wow factor was the fireplace at the foot of the wrought-iron bed, which had a crackling log fire in it that captivated people with its light in the primitive way that real fires do (so rarely do we see them). The party was like two parties: we turned up at 10ish and the ratio of women to men was about 10:1. Ch and I then got into a long, catching-up conversation, then when we decided to go and get another drink, suddenly the ratio had flipped the other way round. Much more like it. I’m not that comfortable surrounded by hundreds of other single and semi-single women, who invariably are also not comfortable around hundreds of other single and semi-single women.
**********************************************************************
There’s a bit of a fun-serious swing going on with this blog. Last week went to a lecture by an Indian economist based at Columbia, A P. Columbia’s so omnimpresent in this city, or at least in the corners of this city that I’ve been hanging out in – there’s a lot more still to be explored that doesn't touch the university and that the university doesn’t touch. A. P. had a rather infuriating fixation with numbers (though understandable, given his profession). He viewed India’s growth in purely economic terms, arguing that along with that growth, the social divides and difficulties will gradually resolve themselves. Yet despite me not liking much of what he said, I couldn’t help liking him, as he conveyed his calculations with charm and a twinkle in his eye. I liked an analogy he made between India’s stagnant growth prior to the opening up of the economy in 1991, and cricket (what else?!). Just as you will never have the best cricket players if they only compete locally and nationally rather than internationally, you will never produce the best products unless you compete in the global marketplace. The problem with that argument though, is that marketplace competition is often for “cheapest” rather than “best”.
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