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.