New Neighbors and A Composer who also Left

Today Pam and I were start­ing the mam­moth labor of pack­ing our life away in prepa­ra­tion for the move. The movers dropped off some boxes and we got started with books and win­ter clothes. It’s still pretty cold, but it has to get warmer some time soon, so we put away the parkas and gloves not into their usual bags in the stor­age we had built years ago but instead into card­board boxes. Don’t ask when we’re going to wear them in mild British Colum­bia. Maybe it will be for trips up Whistler and Grouse.
Dur­ing our pack­ing, we heard our door­bell ring. It was a friendly young fel­low at the door with his wife, who intro­duced them­selves as our new neigh­bors. They wanted to let us know that their mov­ing van will be pulling up (and no doubt caus­ing a lit­tle dis­rup­tion, as ours will in July). They are mov­ing here from Tuc­son, Ari­zona, but both are from South Korea.

It’s always been inter­est­ing to Pam and me that Lilac Court, the lit­tle ‘pedes­trian pocket’ that we’ve lived in for nearly the past 20 years or so, has always had dis­pro­por­tion­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tion by immi­grants, and more recently, those from Asia, who now con­sti­tute more than a quar­ter of the units. I think it’s because Amer­i­cans want to live in the sub­urbs and are put off by the court’s mod­ern archi­tec­ture and open plan. (here’s a photo) They also want front lawns, which we don’t have; the cob­ble­stones go right up to the houses, form­ing a lit­tle piazza for the group of 24 or so units of the court­yard. With­out going into a New Urban­ist tirade like James Howard Kun­stler , author of The Geog­ra­phy of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere — a book I par­tic­u­larly liked, I have to say that this is a shame. It also sug­gests to me that even though we’re tech­ni­cally still Amer­i­cans, it may be that Pam and I are not really cul­tur­ally typ­i­cal Amer­i­cans, and per­haps we haven’t been for a while. If right-wing blog­gers want to point out that fact and say that urban lib­er­als like me hate Amer­ica, then I say we don’t hate this coun­try, but mourn it.

At any rate, as we were intro­duc­ing our­selves to the new neigh­bors (Dong and Wei, I believe), they asked us why we were mov­ing to Canada. At first he joked that it must be because of Bush, and when I said that this was true, and no real joke, he was taken aback (and actu­ally laughed, I think). I’ve noticed that this is often the reac­tion by peo­ple; David Pogue reacted the same way when I told him a cou­ple of months ago. Maybe we’re just act­ing out the punch-line of a joke.

I feel badly, par­tic­u­larly to peo­ple who have immi­grated here, to tell them that this is not the coun­try I knew, and that it has reached the point where I am leav­ing because of that. After all, they chose to come here, and prob­a­bly went through a lot of lone­li­ness, cul­ture shock, annoy­ances, and per­haps even seri­ous sac­ri­fices in order to come here, and there I go, talk­ing about how it’s not good enough for me any more. Oh, you may have saved, moved far away from fam­ily and friends, given up money and valu­ables, but I gotta tell you, the place isn’t worth it any more, not for us. I don’t have a clue what they must be think­ing, aside from amuse­ment and confusion.

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Ear­lier this evening I was lis­ten­ing to music by one of my favorite com­posers: Eduard Tubin. Tubin is utterly unknown by the clas­si­cal music crowd (and the clas­si­cal music lis­ten­ing pub­lic is a pretty small one to begin with). He was a tal­ented and very expres­sive com­poser who was sim­ply in the wrong place (Esto­nia) at the wrong time (just as the Soviet Union was mov­ing in and tak­ing over). Tubin fled to Swe­den and spent most of the remain­der of his life in exile in Stock­holm. The move for him was shat­ter­ing, com­pletely chang­ing his music from the folk-music inspired, glo­ri­ously roman­tic works of his ear­lier years, into an angst-filled and angu­lar style that is thorny, but also very affect­ing. Maybe I’m begin­ning to appre­ci­ate Tubin all the more because he also had to leave the coun­try of his birth. For­tu­nately, unlike in poor Mr. Tubin’s case, bombs are not falling as I am doing it. Nev­er­the­less, I feel a new kin­ship with the guy. I’m curi­ous to see if I’ll still feel that way after the move.

This Morning's New York Times

This Let­ter appeared in the Let­ters to the Edi­tor sec­tion of the Times this morn­ing. (I’d nor­mally point to it rather than quote it, but mate­r­ial in the Times online becomes avail­able only through a fee after a short time):

To the Edi­tor:
Re “Guan­tá­namo Comes to Define U.S. to Mus­lims” (front page, May 21):
You write that in Europe, “there is a per­sis­tent and uneasy sense that the United States fun­da­men­tally changed after Sept. 11, and not for the bet­ter.“
Not only in Europe.
I hear more and more peo­ple here in the United States, regard­less of their pur­ported blue­ness or red­ness, express cyn­i­cism about our coun­try, its spite­ful­ness over mat­ters of reli­gion and its lack of respect for any­one who is not one of the rich and the influ­en­tial.
The abuses at Guan­tá­namo par­al­lel the down­ward drift of our high­est ideals and our pol­i­tics of bet­ter­ment, which lifted so many out of poverty and second-class cit­i­zen­ship.
A fun­da­men­tal change, all right, and one that I pray will be reversible in a few years’ time.

Ter­ence Hughes
New York, May 21, 2005

Mr. Hughes couldn’t have said it bet­ter, except for his last sen­tence. I don’t think that pray­ing is going to make things reverse in a few years’ time. Much of these changes are per­ma­nent.

Why do I think this? In past eras, there as a nat­ural swing of influ­ence from right to left and back again. There was the idea of a con­test, and that every­body was play­ing by the same rule book. I remem­ber Bill Clin­ton chuck­ling at on “60 Min­utes” a few years ago about how he had got­ten snook­ered into mak­ing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” pol­icy one of his first acts in office. The gen­eral pub­lic was baf­fled by why he appar­ently chose this to be the most impor­tant issue that needed atten­tion right after the inau­gu­ra­tion. The inter­view con­tin­ued (I’m para­phras­ing, but I do remem­ber this nearly word-for word): “I answered the call to go to the Pen­ta­gon with­out real­iz­ing what was up. They got me. I wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion and they tripped me up. That’s what they’re sup­posed to do, and I’m sup­posed to be on guard for that.” Clin­ton was clearly rel­ish­ing this sort of game of try­ing to ‘play pol­i­tics’. You win some, I win some, and in the end, we end up with a gov­ern­ment that encom­passes com­pro­mise, as well as a few cases of crafty out-maneuvering.

Since a few years ago, the fol­low­ing items have been in the news:

1. Redis­trict­ing States (by design) to ensure that the minor­ity party can­not get elected to any dis­trict. The State of Texas was the most talked about regard­ing this practice.
2. Con­trol­ling vot­ing machines (man­u­fac­tured by GOP sup­porter Diebold), and in addi­tion, mak­ing sure that there is no paper trail so any fraud is undetectable.
3. Attempt­ing (so far unsuc­cess­fully) to change the rules of the Sen­ate so that fil­i­busters can’t be achieved by the minor­ity party. With this his­tory change (some­times called ‘the nuclear option’) who­ever the Pres­i­dent appoints will go straight through, with a sim­ple major­ity vote for con­fir­ma­tion, to serve a life­time term on the court. That includes the Supreme Court, where the real rule-changing can take off. With far-right wing judges con­trol­ling the Supreme Court, the laws of the US could be rewrit­ten from the ground up.

See a pat­tern? Each of these is not only ‘play­ing dirty’ and fol­low­ing an end-justifies-the-means phi­los­o­phy where all tac­tics are employed. They are also attempts to change how the game is played for now and for the fore­see­able future. Change the bor­ders of the state dis­tricts, switch the tech­nol­ogy for vot­ing and how votes are counted, and alter the rules by which the Leg­isla­tive branch delib­er­ates (and in turn, how the mem­bers of the Judi­cial branch are cho­sen and hence what the laws are), and you ensure that any rever­sal or changes that you don’t want will never hap­pen. They can’t.

In the­ory, the Press would stop some­thing like this, by alert­ing and edu­cat­ing the pub­lic of the dan­gers of these activ­i­ties. Unfor­tu­nately the US Media has been nearly destroyed by the GOP. Pathetic NewsWeek can’t even stand it’s ground when a story that is cer­tainly closer to the truth than not (by the Pentagon’s own doc­u­ments from the past 3 years) is attacked and demol­ished as quickly as John Kerry’s mil­i­tary record. The Press is look­ing more and more like Pravda under the Soviet Union. Soon it will be rel­e­gated to ‘embed­ded’ reports on all activ­i­ties (mil­i­tary or oth­er­wise), total gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship, and crank­ing out human inter­est sto­ries to keep the pub­lic entertained.

Like a can­cer, this re-writing of the rules spreads through­out the polit­i­cal (and eco­nomic) sys­tem. I won’t go into why the Repub­li­can major­ity is doing this (Obvi­ously, since it is ‘God’s will’ in the eyes of the Chris­t­ian Tal­iban, any­thing that changes the gov­ern­ment so that chal­lenges by dis­be­liev­ers are repressed is worth sup­port­ing). True, there are some con­ser­v­a­tives who blanch at this. After all, if the unthink­able hap­pened and they became the minor­ity, they’d be just as frozen out as the cur­rent Democ­rats. But these Rovians think in terms of short-term goals. Get power, keep power and make sure you’ll have power far into the future as you can see.

That’s the rea­son I’m no longer par­tic­i­pat­ing in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. No mat­ter who runs for Pres­i­dent in 2008, the Repub­li­cans will win. They have their hands on too many levers and are not afraid to use them when the time comes. When the game is rigged, you can’t win. WIth that in mind, I’m not quit­ting or giv­ing up. I’m wis­ing up and leav­ing the casino.

Boozeless

The movers gave us a tip: No liq­uids in the mov­ing van (if any­thing breaks or leaks it can ruin stuff). But espe­cially, no alco­hol. I had heard about lim­its as to how much alco­hol you can take into Canada from the US. Appar­ently even a lit­tle on a mov­ing van sends off red alarm bells amongst the cus­toms offi­cers. So, what do you do when you have about 6 weeks before you are going to move, and you have 2 well-stocked cab­i­nets of every­thing from vodka, gin, scotch (includ­ing about 3 bot­tles of good sin­gle malt), rum, tequila, vin­tage port, and about 2 dozen bot­tles of wine rang­ing from cheap stuff (or as they call it in Britain, plonk) to some very nice bordeaux?

You can’t very well drink it all!

That was my liver talk­ing. For­tu­nately I have cousins who can store it for me, as well as get it down to Bal­ti­more to my par­ents, who can then take the stuff, maybe a half a dozen or so bot­tles at a time, to my brother in Seat­tle. From there, we can get it across the bor­der in small batches. At this rate we’ll have the con­tents of our liquor cab­i­net back in… 5 years! At any rate, we met my cousins in New­ton, where they hap­pened to be while one of them was in town for a busi­ness meet­ing. Moved boxes from car trunk to car trunk in pour­ing rain. Bye bye Grey Goose, Maker’s Mark and Blue Sapphire.

Hor­rific weather today. High winds, rain, and cold (about 9 C, 48 F). I need a drink. Doh!

Survival of the Smartest

Another rea­son that we are leav­ing the United States is the country’s descent into irra­tional and prim­i­tive mythology.

Exam­ple: The State of Kansas has once again tried to attack the teach­ing of Evo­lu­tion in their pub­lic schools. They are sup­port­ing the teach­ing instead of ‘Intel­li­gent Design’, which is just a fancy way of say­ing ‘God Did It’. This is to be taught in Sci­ence Class. If this doesn’t bother you, stop read­ing right now. A ter­rific arti­cle I saw in Sci­en­tific American’s web site: 15 Answers to Cre­ation­ist Non­sense lays out just how fal­la­cious the Intel­li­gent Design argu­ments are.

In an exquis­ite twist of irony, this move could cause large swaths of the US to be less com­pet­i­tive in the global econ­omy (and in a sense, the world’s ecosys­tem) where more edu­cated and enlight­ened coun­tries tend to suc­ceed. Accord­ing to the laws of Nat­ural Selec­tion — that they them­selves refuse to believe in — those Kansas know-nothings will be less com­pet­i­tive in the mar­ket­place, and will (eco­nom­i­cally) not thrive. Unfor­tu­nately, this does not keep them from breed­ing, but they’ll even­tu­ally be some­what cut off (and irrel­e­vant, just as some third world coun­tries are today, again — eco­nom­i­cally). Since they dis­pute the valid­ity and value of Sci­ence, I won­der if they wouldn’t also give up their tele­phones, tele­vi­sions, com­put­ers, inter­net con­nec­tions and other trap­pings of the last cen­tury? What hap­pens when these lux­u­ries break down and can’t be repaired as their edu­cated cit­i­zens leave for employ­ment else­where, and their stu­dents are unpre­pared for col­leges where sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy is taught. That last bit won’t hap­pen, but I don’t think I’d be look­ing toward Kansas for much eco­nomic growth over the next few decades.

A sim­i­lar dynamic is show­ing up in Stem Cell Research. With South Korea announc­ing some absolutely spec­tac­u­lar suc­cesses in that area of sci­ence this past week, and Bush sub­se­quently peremp­to­rily announc­ing his oppo­si­tion to a bill that would free up gov­ern­ment fund­ing on such research, a com­men­ta­tor noted that all this does is make the US Gov­ern­ment less and less rel­e­vant to the whole activ­ity. As this sci­ence pro­gresses and the money starts to pour in when investors bet on com­pa­nies that will deliver the mir­a­cle cures based on stem cells, the Bush Administration’s medieval view only insures that (as the com­men­ta­tor put it): “the red-state sci­en­tists will move to the blue states, and then in turn, all the sci­en­tists will move out of the US to the coun­tries where this research is flour­ish­ing.” Once again, the US digs it’s own eco­nomic grave and glee­fully leaps into it, all in the name of fun­da­men­tal­ist religion.

Just as the best and bright­est sci­en­tists (as well as artists, writ­ers, musi­cians and dancers) left the Soviet Union, over time I believe it will also hap­pen to the once great United States of Amer­ica. I am sad about this, but as we often say these days, we feel like we can’t get out of here quickly enough.

Lighten Up

Due to dire weather fore­casts (which were, of course, incor­rect as usual), the MIT Flea was pretty lightly attended, both by sell­ers and buy­ers. Too bad it was our last one. So, as Mr. Eliot says, ‘not with a bang but a whim­per’. We sold enough to cover the entry fee, but not as much as we would have liked to. We keep culling our paper­backs; Pam is much bet­ter than I at this (I want to hold on to too many of them). Think lighter. Think leaner. Think small rooms and even less stor­age than here (well, maybe the same, if you count the stor­age in the garage that we haven’t seen yet).

We have two mov­ing com­pa­nies (our tar­get is three) com­ing out to give us esti­mates this week. We keep vac­il­lat­ing on what fur­ni­ture we’ll take. There is a core group of items — the bed, the din­ing room table and chairs, the liv­ing room couch and chairs. After that, a lot of books, the cut­lery, dishes and glasses, the com­puter equip­ment and printer, and the art, it gets dicier. Some­times an item is on the truck, some days it’s off.

We keep going back and forth on how we’re going to make the final trek our­selves. Will it be rental car or take our unre­li­able Bee­tle on one last trip across Canada? Fly together or sep­a­rately? I swear, we must have run through every per­mu­ta­tion and vari­a­tion of the these. We debate and dis­cuss ad nau­seam the finer points of dri­ving ver­sus the time in motels saved on one flight. If only it weren’t so tricky to get so much stuff moved so far!

The Econ­o­mist came out with their 2004 Rank­ings with every­thing from Corn pro­duc­tion to the Divorce rate of most coun­tries in the world. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle book­let. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est was their best cities to live. Num­ber 1 city in the world to live? Zurich, Switzer­land. Num­ber 2 city? Geneva, Switzer­land. If Fon­due and Cuckoo clocks don’t agree with you, the third city, Num­ber 3 as the best city in the world to live is our des­ti­na­tion: Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia. Don’t tell, OK? Wouldn’t want it to get too crowded and ruin our fun.