Russia summits

Good article on U.S. / Russia summits. Diplomacy remains close to my heart:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/world/europe/summits-kremlin-us-presidents.html

"Men without Women" Murakami

I recently finished Men Without Women, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. I'm such a fan of his, and (as a Times review said) this provides all the Murakami trademarks a reader wants - a mysterious cat, rock n roll vinyl, late nights in Tokyo bars.

My favorite short story was called "Kino." The protagonist was a man named Kino who sort of stumbles through life. He was injured as an athlete and began selling shoes because his coach recommended it. His wife left him, and with minimal objections he uprooted his life and opened a bar in a space that a family member encouraged him to take. He floated through life, but in the end he's forced to live the emotions he has been suppressing. It ends:

"Don't look away, look right at it," someone whispered in his ear. "This is what your heart looks like."

The willow branches swayed in the early summer breeze. In a small dark room, somewhere inside Kino, a warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he felt that hand on his, soft and substantial. He'd forgotten this, had been apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply. He said this to himself. And he wept. In that dark, still room.

All the while the rain did not let up, drenching the world in a cold chill.

I think too often I am like Kino, removed from my emotions because dealing with them would be too much work and too messy.

In another favorite short story called "An Independent Organ," a doctor who is floating quite successfully through life falls in love for the first time. It forces him to question the entire foundation of himself as a person.

"Who in the world am I? I've really been wondering about this..."

"Who am I?" he went on. "Up until now I've worked as a cosmetic plastic surgeon and never had any doubts about it. Graduated from the plastic surgery department of med school, worked first with my father as his assistant, then took over the clinic when his eyes started to go and he retired. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm a pretty skilled surgeon. The world of plastic surgery can be pretty seedy, and there are some clinics that put out splashy advertising but do mediocre work. I've always been conscientious about my work, and I've never had any major problems with my clients. I'm proud of this as a professional. I'm happy with my private life, too. I have a lot of friends, and have stayed healthy up till now. I'm enjoying life. But still these days I've often wondered Who in the world am I? And very seriously at that. If you took away my career as a plastic surgeon, and the happy environment I'm living in, and throw me out into the world, with no explanation, and with everything stripped away--what in the world would I be?"

Tokai looked me right in the eye, as if seeking some sort of response.

"Why have you suddenly started to think that way?" I asked.

"I think it's because of a book I read a while ago about the Nazi concentration camps."  

He goes on to discuss how nothing in his life that he relies on - his experience, his career, his relationships - would prepare him to survive in Auschwitz.

I identify with Tokai, but I do think that I'm being hard on myself in this case. I've certainly survived in tough situations, and those experiences can help me understand "Who am I?"

In addition to these stand outs, there was an interesting story that drew on the story of Scheherazade (one of my favorite myths / tales). 

I love Murakami and should review his full bibliography to ensure I've read everything. 

A final note. One of the reasons I enjoy Murakami so much is that he changed his life quickly over night. After running a bar with his wife, he decided to become an author, and he must be one of the world's most renowned and successful authors today. His characters' ability to appreciate detail and become drawn into music, food, and other aspects of culture always inspire me as well.

Days, life, and New York

This quote was included in the article I discussed in my last post, by Kevin Baker. I think it took on a different meaning for me than perhaps the author, or La Guardia himself, intended, because of where I am in my life and what I contemplate on a day to day basis.

"Too often, life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days, whereas in fact it can be a great, living, thrilling adventure." Fiorello La Guardia, 1933

A city of workers and eccentrics...

Shortly after I wrote my last post, I found the cover article of July's Harpers Magazine, called "Death of a Great American City." Kevin Baker wrote this article, and while I think he very nicely articulates the concerns I have about the city losing its character by economically unsustainable for artists and creatives, I think he also gives way to the nostalgia and impracticality that tarnishes the arguments I would like to make.

Baker tries to strike a balance, but often ends up damning development on the whole, and draws on no data and loads of undocumented nostalgia.

In one quote, he does perfectly articulate my concerns and desire for the city.

But New York should be a city of workers and eccentrics as well as visionaries and billionaires; a place of school-teachers and garbage men and janitors, or people who wear buttons reading IS IT FASCISM YET? -- as one woman in my neighborhood has for decades, even as she grows steadily grayer and more stooped. A city of people who sell books on the street-- and in their own shops. A city of street photographers, and immigrant vendors, and bus drivers with attitudes, and even driven businessmen and hedge fund operators. All helped to get along a little better, out of gratitude for all that they do to keep everything running, and to keep New York remarkable.

And earlier in his story he articulated it slightly differently, focusing on the experience in the street.

It is through all these interactions, multiplied a million times, that a truly great city is made. The street life--the warrens of little shops and businesses that once sustained our neighborhood in the sort of 'exhuberant diversity' that Jane Jacobs considered a prerequisite for a successful city--is being eradicated as well: the botanica on 96th Stree that Susan, my sister-in-law, always visisted to buy her healing herbs when she was in town; the Indians spice shop next to it, with the protective elephant-headed idol of Ganesh mounted outside. ...

... These stores, like so many others in my neighborhood, ahve not been replaced. They are simply... gone.

He also provided an interesting history of the city in the 60's and 70's that I was previously unfamiliar with. Basically, the decline in the port system (as container shipping began), and a decline in manufacturing in the Northeast US, meant a decline in industrial jobs just as a large number of African Americans and Hispanics arrived in the city.

The great threat to the New York of the Sixties and Seventies--and many other cities in the Northeast and Miwest--was considered to be the flood of largely unskilled, uneducated African Americans from the South and Hispanics from the islands. (He goes on to address the racism in this.)... 

But the 'peasants' pour in just as the hopeful and the desperate had always come, though they encountered, for the first time in New York's history, a city that no longer had many entry-level industrial jobs to offer them. The result was perverse, a New York that was home to more than a million welfare recipients and featured almost full employment for everyone else; a city where 7 milion to 14 million square feet of office space--the size of the entire downtown of a metropolis such as Kansas City or Pittsburgh--was built in New York every year from 1967 to 1970, as Ric Burns and James Sandeers notes in their history of the city. 

Urban experience: Where can the arts thrive?

I spend a weird amount of time thinking about what cities still allow the arts to thrive. Is New York too expensive and fully gentrified for an artist to live? If so, where can an artist thrive today, as artists did in NYC in the 80s?

First off, I have to acknowledge that I have no statistics to support this narrative. I'm sure artists struggle in every region and throughout time. There are certainly conditions that allow artists to make a living and even thrive, and it is productive to explore those conditions, so that we could even mimic them in NYC today.

I first became truly interested after attending a fundraising and promotional event for a nonprofit that raises money to support theater spaces in NYC. Many many theater spaces in NYC closed over the past several years, as property owners and developers decided that a theater wasn't the best and highest use of a property. I was told at this event that young actors and writers regularly choose Detroit over New York (I do believe however that the draw of New York would continue for generations even if this worrying real estate trend continued unchecked).

I recently read a NY Times article on "Athens, Rising" after the economic crisis it has experienced for the last decade. According to the author, art spaces and a vibrant restaurant and nightlife scene have emerged in the wake of the crisis. Has the economic difficulty of the crisis facilitated the artistic and creative vibrancy we see today?

It's hard to say. The author and those he interviews do question this narrative, but it remains compelling for me.

'We all got fired or we quite because we weren't getting paid,' he [Theodosis Michos, founded of an online magazine called Popaganda] said, and yet in 2013, arguably the lowest point of the crisis, Theosis was part of a collective that covers culture and city lie through an Athenians lens. 'The first thing we did to resist the crisis psychologocially was to tell ourselves again and again: O.K., we are artists, we are writers, this is the best time for us, because when artists have nothing, the can do anything,' he said, adding that this isn't actually true. 'We told ourselves this so many times, that we started to believe it'

(This alludes to another theory, that art may thrive in resistance -- psychological resistance -- to economic, political, or cultural forces that appear to inhibit the artist.)

Continuing to question this theory of art thriving in economic crisis:

'It's not like, oh, the crisis, I'll start painting. That's not happening!' said Konstatntinos Dagritzikos, who opened [a nightlife spot] ... in 2009... And yet the place they launched at the start of the crisis did evolve into the amibitious cultureal venue they imagined, which now attracts droves to shows by Greenk artists like the fuzz-rock outfit the Noise Figures and the chill-wave duo Keep Shelly in Athens, as well as interantional acts.

...

Fotis is now often on the road, explorinig those destinationa dn the many inventive restaurants and visitor attractiions that have emerged in Greece since the crisis, from a wave of young chefs using Nordic, French and East Asian cooking techniques on local ingredients, to a multitude of 'second-act producers,' people left unemploye or underemployed who returned to the villages where they grew up and began to sell homemade, organic, artisanal Greek products -- to phenomenal results.

'I think everybody became more creative after the crisis, more cooperative,' he said.

""

Certainly the philanthropic and corporate world plays a role in Athens, as we see in NYC. The author closes with the story of an epic all night party  (or maybe normal by Greek standards) put on by the Onassis Foundation. He also talks about the rivalry with the Niarchose Foundation Cultural Center, and how the former business rivals now have dueling cultural legacies in Athens.

The author also highlights the ongoing problem of poverty, crime, and drugs in Athens, which is not to be forgotten in this discussion of whether certain economic circumstances facilitate art. In fact, these consequences of economic crisis perhaps highlight the importance of studying this issue, to identify how to mimic conditions that facilitate a thriving art scene within a thriving economy.

I think we are a long way from understanding this, and I'm not sure if anyone is studying the conditions that facilitate a thriving arts scene.

However, I still wonder where internationally, and in the U.S., the arts are thriving? It seems that Athens is one such place.

Lessons learned on building a house (from watching a British TV show about home building)

Larry and I enjoy a British TV show called "Great Designs," which follows home builders along their journey. In about 90% of the episodes, they run way way way over budget. The show has made me completely paranoid about losing my shirt building a dream home.

I've learned a good bit from these sad stories, and here's what I'm taking away as we think about someday creating a Hudson Valley home for ourselves:

Build only what you need. I didn't assume (and still don't) that there is a linear relationship between square footage and cost, but you can save a lot of money by not taking on too big of a project. Larry and I now talk about building a minimum viable home. That way we can build a home earlier (when we're younger) and still enjoy it, even if it means we can't host Christmas and tons of friends ever summer. We can add all that later.

Use standard designs and materials whenever possible. People seem to get themselves into trouble when they try to do very nonstandard things.

Choose your plot wisely. Sometimes a remote location can add a lot of cost (transportation, etc).

Anticipate budget overruns. Some would say "plan for 10% more than you expect." However, after seeing the financial strains people put themselves through, I think you should look at your maximum budget and back off 20%. Then you'll actually be ready for overruns.

If possible, commit your contractor to particular prices (or a range) and pass overruns onto them.

On a separate note, prepare your marriage for the strain that building a home can put on it.

Thoughts on Wendy Kann's memoir "Casting with a Fragile Thread"

Kann's book is an interesting personal story. I couldn't put down the first 100 pages or so.

I mainly picked the book up because I love Alexandra Fuller's books so much, and I thought this would be similar. Kann does not provide all the context Fuller does, and her Salisbury (Harare) suburban upbringing is different from Fuller's rural experience. And it doesn't really have a clear moral perspective on the experience of Rhodesians / Zimbabweans before, during, or after the civil war. Although she takes a light touch to reflect on these issues, she constantly talks about how lonely white people are in rural Zambia, when they are certainly surrounded by the black community. Of course, they may actually feel lonely, but there is no reflection on why this is right, wrong, absurd, etc.

She does touch on the complexity of the experience of white Africans. In one story, her sister has "squatters" on her farm, who claim that the land is their cultural heritage. For local political reasons, they are ultimately kicked off the land in a brutal and sad manner ("Barefoot mothers scooped up wailing children; police ignited huts and corn; the little village burst into flame."). Kann notes that:

"Lauren and Richard had their land back. A strange combination of fear and guilt remained lodged in their throats, but those are not unusual emotions in Africa, and after a week or two the feelings started to dissipate."

Of course, if Kann didn't have to share this sad and complex story with her readers, so I appreciate that she treated this delicate issue in her writing.

The story is compelling because it's seems unusual to most Westerners, but otherwise it's a personal story of family struggles and hardships (and yet, relative privilege).