Category: Culture
Envying the U.K.
Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version.
It felt a little like Christmas morning to wake up today to the news that Britain’s Labour Party has swept the Conservative Party out of power, reducing the number of Tory seats in Parliament to its lowest number ever. At last, the ghost of Margaret Thatcher has been exorcized. Though there have been two Labour governments in the U.K. since Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Thatcher’s neoliberalism has been the governing philosophy since 1979.
Here in the U.S., President Biden has done much to lay neoliberalism to rest, though our foolish political media, interested only in political conflict rather than government, have had very little to say about it. Biden’s accomplishments are particularly notable in light of a Congress nearly paralyzed by a right wing desperate to take the U.S. back to the days of the Confederacy.
Though most of the political work of reversing neoliberalism and Thatcherism remains to be done, the intellectual work is solid. I am reading Joseph Stiglitz’s new book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, and will write about it later. Stiglitz drives a stake into the zombie heart of neoliberal dogma. It’s a book that I hope policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic are reading. Now is a good time to become familiar with the thinking (and proposals) of progressive economists, the better to judge what Britain’s Labour Party does now that they have pretty much unchallengeable power, with 412 seats in Parliament compared with the Conservative Party’s ever-so-humiliating 112.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party lost 38 seats and retains only nine seats in the British Parliament. And in France, it’s looking like the French are going to have to learn about right-wing governments the hard way, like the United Kingdom did. And here in the U.S., we are now in a state of complete chaos and unpredictability until the Democratic Party decides what to do about President Biden. At least in Britain people can sleep easier now.
Not exactly the High Hay
One of the most memorable bits of landscape in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is The Hedge, or “High Hay,” that protected the Hobbits of Buckland from the scary creatures of the Old Forest. The Hedge was very dense, and to get into the forest there was a tunnel lined with brick under the hedge, blocked with iron bars.
Fifteen years ago, I made a rough trail into the woods that leads to a huge rock that overhangs a small stream — a picturesque and magical spot where a huge beech tree grows amongst the other hardwoods, with its roots near the stream and its upper branches at the top of the canopy. I planted small arbor vitae trees on either side of the opening to decorate the trailhead, though the arbor vitaes are now being overcome by woodsy things.
The woods that adjoin the abbey are very dark, dense, moist, and cool, a place where hardly a single photon of sunlight goes to waste. Where there’s light, a leaf will grow to try to catch it. I’ve learned that, left alone, the edges of a woods are a special kind of ecosystem. At the edges of a woods, light comes from the side as well as above, so growth is exuberant. There are certain species of trees that particularly like to grow at the edge of a woods, wild persimmon trees in particular … not to mention poison oak. The edge of a woods can be very dense. Birds love it there. Here at the abbey, the deer have a door into the woods in the backyard as well as the front.
We Americans need the Guardian now
The U.S. edition of the Guardian has been a part of my daily news-reading rounds for years. I probably should have subscribed long ago. Today I did it.
The reasons for subscribing to the Guardian have continued to add up. I will list them, because I think the reasons are important to all Americans in these times, not just me.
Loss of confidence in the Washington Post
Whether you read the Washington Post or not, the Post’s problems are important, because the Post’s influence is huge in setting the agenda for the American media. The Washington Post has been losing money. To try to stop the bleeding, the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (who also owns Amazon) has brought in a bunch of British Tories who used to work for Rupert Murdoch’s news and propaganda operation. Not only that, the Washington Post knew about Samuel Alito’s right-wing MAGA flags more than three years ago, but decided not to write about it until the New York Times broke the story recently. The Post’s response to being caught in such a MAGA-friendly catch-and-kill was slimy, as was the Post’s reaction to a near rebellion in its newsroom about the recent changes in management. If you’d like to know more about the implosion at the Washington Post, I recommend two articles, both from Dan Froomkin’s Press Watch: “Beware the Tory Takeover of the Washington Post,” and “Will Lewis must go. The Washington Post publisher’s actions cast doubt on his newsroom’s credibility.” Dan Froomkin, by the way, is an old colleague of mine. We both got our start in newspapers at the same newspaper forty years ago.
Loss of confidence in the American mainstream media
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, “All the news that’s profit-friendly.” Once again, Dan Froomkin does a fine job of shredding the New York Times’ political coverage: “New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it.” I will continue to read and subscribe to the New York Times, as well as the Washington Post. The important thing is to keep in mind that both newspapers go way too far in treating right-wing gaslighting as though it’s something to be taken seriously. They claim, of course, that that’s what the principles of journalism require. I say horsewash. It’s what corporate management requires. Truth is the standard of journalism, not both-sides “balance.”
Europe is more important to Americans than ever
Yesterday, members of the European Union voted for members of the European parliament. This provided the best picture yet of the political situation in Europe post-Brexit and post-Ukraine. (Britain, of course, withdrew from the European Union in 2020, but all of Europe is dealing with the regressive forces that led to Brexit.) The same political winds that blow in Europe also blow here in the United States. Sometimes Britain and the U.S. move in the same direction. Think Thatcher/Reagan, and Blair/Clinton. Britain will have a parliamentary election on July 4. The Tories are expected to get their asses handed to them for 14 years of misrule. Wouldn’t it be nice if there’s something predictive there for the fate of the American Republican Party in November?
Europe: A quick comparison
The mainstream media, as I have regularly complained, is always quick to flatter right-wing power and terrify liberals. Consider this headline in the New York Times today: “Conservative Dominance and Other Takeaways from the E.U. Elections.” There is more nuance if you read on. But the Guardian, by contrast, emphasizes that the situation is complicated and doesn’t play the fear card to scare liberals. The Guardian doesn’t downplay the fact that Denmark, Hungary, and Poland did not move to the right. I don’t know enough to try to analyze what the vote means in smaller E.U. countries that get little attention — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta. I do think it’s safe to say, though, that countries that have experienced right-wing, anti-democratic, authoritarian governments learn some lessons that other countries might have to relearn — France and Germany, for example.
Three editions of the Guardian
The Guardian has a U.S. edition, a U.K. edition, and a European edition, all three of which are of great interest and all three of which are included in a subscription. (There also are Australia and International editions.) American publications don’t cover Europe very well. Where coverage overlaps, comparison is always revealing. I have access to the Times of London through Apple News, but I’m even more skeptical of the super-Tory Times of London’s political coverage than that of the New York Times. The Times of London’s coverage of Scotland is incredibly snarky and condescending. Again, comparison is always revealing. I should not neglect to mention that you can get full access to the Guardian by merely registering, but there will be ads and a promotion for subscriptions on every page. Paid subscribers bypass that. Not to mention that the Guardian deserves all the support it can get. The Wikipedia article on the Guardian describes how the Guardian pays for itself. Hint: It’s not owned by a billionaire.
Information isn’t free
I’m becoming increasingly resigned to the cost of information. I’ve complained that, at my stage of life, the biggest expenses now are insurance and property maintenance. What I pay for books and subscriptions seems to get higher every year, but I’ll deal with it.
Update
For what it’s worth, it’s interesting to take note of what financial markets thought of this election. Share prices in most European countries fell. The stock of two big French banks was down more than 5 percent. Britain’s pound rose to its highest level against the euro in almost two years. The U.S. dollar rose to almost 93 euro cents. French and German bonds weakened. None of these changes are exactly dramatic, but it would appear that the rich don’t think that the prospect of more right-wingery will make them richer.
Ken is now on Substack
Ken Ilgunas is now on Substack. He’s also in the process of deciding whether to also start a podcast, but I suspect he will do that.
You can sign up for his Substack articles here. Some articles will be free, and others will require a subscription.
In his first Substack post, “My bizarre relationship with money,” he explains why he has taken a new approach to managing his career as a writer.
Longtime readers of this blog know Ken well. He lived here on and off for a number of years, starting in 2010. In 2013, he published his first book, Walden on Wheels. His second book, Trespassing Across America, was in 2017, and This Land is Our Land was in 2018. Though he wandered in those years, Acorn Abbey was his home base for seven years. Ken now lives in Scotland with his wife and young daughter. Ken is one of those lucky people with a dual citizenship. His dad was born in Scotland.
For the record, Ken and I email each other regularly and visit when we can. We continue to be literary confederates.
In many ways, Ken is like a time traveler from the future — a better future, from which he comes back to point the way. Whatever Ken is thinking — and his thoughts roam wide over many subjects — always points the way forward. I am 35 years older than Ken. I won’t live in as much of that future as younger people will. But through Ken we older folks can glimpse what that future will look like, as long as good ideas can prevail over all the bad ones.
C.J. Sansom’s Dissolution
I was not aware of C.J. Sansom until I read his obituary in the New York Times. I immediately ordered his first novel, Dissolution, and read it pretty fast, because it was quite good. There are seven novels in the Shardlake series. Matthew Shardlake is a kind of Tudor-era detective and lawyer who (at least in the first book of the series) works for Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is in the process of dissolving England’s monasteries for King Henry VIII. The Shardlake character is one of Cromwell’s “commissioners” who go out to the monasteries and do Cromwell’s legal work (and dirty work).
Sansom died just a few days before a television series named “Shardlake” started streaming. According to every source I’ve seen, the series was made by Disney+, but I can’t for the life of me find it on Disney+. I did find it, though, on Hulu.
After the first few chapters of Dissolution I was a bit disappointed, because Sansom doesn’t write the snappiest dialogue in the history of fiction. But by the end of the novel I was impressed. The novel is beautifully constructed. Sansom, who was also a lawyer, had a Ph.D. in history. I am highly inclined to trust Sansom’s take on the history of the dissolution of the English monasteries under Henry VIII. In a historical note at the end of the book, Sansom comments on the scarcity of studies on the dissolution of the monasteries. He pretty much dismisses two fairly recent books — 1992 (Yale) and 1993 (Oxford) — and says that the last major study of the dissolution was published in 1959 — The Religious Orders in England: The Tudor Age, David Knowles, Cambridge University Press, 1959. I have ordered a copy of the 1959 Knowles book on eBay and will probably write about it here later on. I am not the least interested in Catholicism in England, but as an unrepentant heathen I am very interested in the erasure of Catholicism in England.
So far I have watched only the first episode of the “Shardlake” television series. The television series is not, not, not faithful to Sansom’s novel. The television series removes one of Sansom’s key characters (Mark Poer) and replaces him with a character named Jack Barak. I do not, not, not approve. The writer of the TV series, Stephen Butchard, says that Sansom’s Mark Poer was too submissive for television and that a character was needed who would do more head-butting with Shardlake. That really irks me, because the television character is a snarky contemporary smart-ass like any number of cookie-cutter male characters that you’ll find on HBO or Netflix. Sansom’s Mark Poer character never snarks at Shardlake, but he certainly was man enough to think his own thoughts and go his own way. I also am skeptical of the television version of the Shardlake character, who sometimes seems mean and heartless in a way that Sansom’s Shardlake never was. It makes me wonder whether the actors have even read the books, the same way I have wondered whether the cast of the 2015 television version of Winston Graham’s Poldark had ever read the books, because they got their characters all wrong.
In any case, if you think you might be interested in C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake novels, I’d highly recommend reading the books first.
As for the dissolution of the monasteries, I hope to have a more informed view after I’ve read The Religious Orders in England: The Tudor Age. But based on what (admittedly little) I know at present, I have to wonder if the history of Western civilization wouldn’t be very different if Henry VIII had never shut down the monasteries (and reallocated the monasteries’ money and land). If Rome had continued to keep England barefoot and domesticated for five hundred more years, could Elizabeth I or the British Empire ever have happened? If not for the religious turmoil that so changed the church and transferred so much power downward from the pope and the bishops to literate commoners, could Edinburgh ever have led the Enlightenment? Could the American colonists have thrown off both a king and a pope?
The magical threads from nowhere to somewhere
When Charles Dickens was a young man, he would sit on London Bridge and watch the traffic — the people on the bridge, the ships on the river. Though London was a somewhere rather than a nowhere, it’s easy to imagine that Dickens thought of the faraway places to which the ships were bound, or from which they were coming. In David Copperfield, Dickens’ young hero does the same thing:
“[B]ut I know that I was often up at six o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no more than that I hope I believed them myself.”
A common theme in literature is stories that start nowhere but take the reader somewhere as the plot unfolds. Often the stories return to nowhere at the end (because there’s no place like home). One of the reasons we read is to escape the nowhere in which most of us live for a vicarious look at somewhere.
Through the miracle of the global network that we call the Internet, there are new ways of sitting in the stone recesses of London Bridge and watching the world go by. When I discovered the YouTube live stream from London’s Heathrow Airport, I spent an embarrassing amount of time, as though mesmerized, just watching the planes land, one after another, about a minute apart. The chat window identifies the plane and says where it came from — Buenos Aires, maybe, after a long flight, or Edinburgh after a short one — sometimes places I have never been, sometimes places I remember, and sometimes places that I still would like to go.
Then I realized that planes fly over my little piece of nowhere all the time. I also realized that there are apps that can identify those planes as they fly over and reveal where they came from and where they are going. It happens that a great many planes in and out of Atlanta fly right over me on the way to Europe and beyond. In no time at all, I saw (in the app) a plane on its way to Paris that was headed my way. I went out to see if I could see it. My eyes never found it, but I heard it pass over. Paris! Until Notre Dame caught fire, I had not planned to ever go to Paris again. Now I want to see Notre Dame after it has been repaired. Then there was a flight to Rome, a big Airbus that made so much noise that I could hear it through my bedroom window.
The YouTube streaming service from Heathrow is Flight Focus 365. The URL changes a couple of times a day, so you’ll need to select the live stream from the list of videos.
The app, for iPhone and Android, is Plane Finder.
Update:
As long as we’re talking about Heathrow Airport, I should mention Windsor Castle. Planes approaching Heathrow from the east pass right over Windsor when they’re about six miles from Heathrow. The altitude is low, a little more than 2,000 feet, so if you’ve got a window seat you’ll get a very good look at Windsor Castle. There are stories that Queen Elizabeth II was so accustomed to the sound of airplanes overhead that she could identify airplanes from their sound.
I should also mention Slough, which is visible in the map below. I had wondered how “Slough” is pronounced. The train toward Paddington Station stops at Slough about 25 minutes before Paddington Station. According to the automated voice that calls out the stops, “Slough” rhymes with “how.”
A podcast with Ken
Regular readers here will remember Ken, who lived here at the abbey on and off for a number of years and who wrote his books here. He’s featured in a new podcast from The Art of Manliness that I think is brilliant. The podcast is about Ken’s first book, Walden on Wheels.
Podcast #980: Walden on Wheels — A Man, a Debt, and an American Adventure
Remember Madras?
I can’t remember what made me think about Madras shirts last week. It might have been because we were having uncommonly hot weather for early spring, and that started me thinking about whether I needed new warm-weather shirts. I’ve made a bad habit of buying Harris tweed jackets on eBay, so of course I went on eBay and searched for Madras shirts.
There were quite a few. Most of them seemed to have been made by Ralph Lauren. They were surprisingly inexpensive, which made me think that, unlike well made Harris tweed jackets, which can be pretty dear, nobody wants Madras shirts anymore.
Well, too bad for them, then, because I’ll wear them. When I was in junior high school (think 1963), Madras shirts were a major thing and a status symbol. I don’t think I had one until high school, when I bought a Madras shirt with my own money, which I had earned from my weekend job as a newspaper copy boy. It was mostly yellow, as I recall, with a lot of narrow deep red lines, and maybe some blue or green.
The shirt I’m wearing in the photo actually is 100 percent linen, which makes me think that it’s not authentic made-in-India Madras. Madras was always made from cotton, as far as I know. But it seems that the history of Madras is as long as the history of Harris tweed. Originally, Madras cloth was loomed by hand, by workers in India. Unsurprisingly, there also is some sort of British colonial connection, including a particular connection with Scotland.
Go figure. But my new thinking is that Madras shirts are to hot weather as Harris tweed jackets are to cold weather. And suddenly I’m afraid that I’m at risk of starting a collection. They are outrageously comfortable, though, and much cheaper on eBay than any decent shirt bought new.
The Taste of Things
I have some complaints about the plot of “The Taste of Things,” but the plot really isn’t the point. The point is the food and what happens in the kitchen and at the table. The amazingly beautiful food in this film makes me feel like a complete slob in the kitchen.
Did anyone really cook and eat like that in the 19th Century? Was anyone in the 19th Century really that far ahead of us in presentation? I tend to doubt it. But the point, I think, has to do with the deep roots of high cuisine, what we owe to the French, and the importance of having a garden just outside the kitchen door.
This film was released in U.S. theaters earlier this year. It’s now available for rent or purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. I actually bought it rather than renting it. There are a great many things happening in the kitchen that move a little too fast to properly study. I’ll want to review the kitchen work. The film opens with Juliette Binoche in the garden harvesting celeriac. The kitchen work moved too fast for me to see whether the celeriac reappears in the kitchen, but, if it does, I’m very curious about celeriac.
Sooner or later you’re going to be asked whether you’ve seen this film. You want to be able to say yes.