Legacy cities
Legacy Cities and the Changing Nature of the Good Life, Ethan Zuckerman blog, Aug. 2022
I will leave this article on top because it speaks for itself. I have been reading Ethan Zuckerman's blog for many many years - surprisingly he is still writing even twenty or thirty years after he started - he spent many years in Ghana, and frankly part of the reason I followed him was that part of me loved the idea of simply moving there, calling it home, and doing whatever was possible to improve life. Now he is applying those skills to the rust-belt cities I grew up in - Buffalo, Toledo, Cleveland, among others - and I could totally understand what he was seeing and saying.
Now by the way he's married (congratulations!), and lives in Pittsfield, Mass. There are worse fates. Read the article and tell me what you think. And, know that I am seeing Galesburg, and all of Illinois, in the same light - as one who has come back, still wondering how to make this area more livable and sustainable. It's everyone's business.
Fear of brown people as a politically motivating force
One of the cardinal rules of Fear of brown people as a politically motivating force, is that no one will admit that that's what's going on. No one will actually say, "I have changed my political views because basically, subconsciously, I'm very uncomfortable with any non-white running the place, and I want to make sure that never happens again." It would be impolite to say such a thing, and an admission of overt racism. But that doesn't keep it from happening. It happens, and then all of a sudden there's a strong movement to make sure that no political party can simply change leaders without calling a general election.
Now I'm not British, but I look on with interest at what's happening there since, having been through it, I know that a lot of people will be expressing those fears through other political movements. Here, we no longer have a conservative party, since the Republicans were basically taken over by the fear-of-brown-people movement and their leader was not fiscally conservative at all. So it definitely has the potential to reshape the political landscape for decades to come.
One thing I might mention is that the leader in question, Sunak, is probably pretty middle-of-the-road conservative, in the same way Obama was middle-of-the-road liberal, and therefore will not destroy the country or even change much in the sense that certain things are much larger than anything a leader can affect. These two, Obama and Sunak, had to be very close to the norm in terms of pleasing their political peers to get in the position they were/are in, and being true to themselves, will not totally upend either country for any reason, and in fact will be a stabilizing force.
Another aspect of Fear of brown people as a force is that it is never as clear as simply accusing people of racism instead of genuine political interest. In our case the issue that got Trump elected was immigration - he signaled dislike of brown people by accusing Mexican immigrants of being rapists. He obviously struck a chord with people who just felt that too many were crossing the border and ultimately would take over life as we know it and make the U.S. into a third world country. There are people who scan the news for cases of some illegal immigrant committing some crime (it does happen) and then they make sure that this case is known throughout the churches of the land, in places where fear-mongering works and brings out the Republican vote. We can accuse them of racism, but it
is an issue and has been an issue for many years, and in fact with the demographics turning against white people (that's the real issue), the fears will just get stronger and more pronounced. And they will come out as increasingly strong opposition to any immigration at all, or even opposition to abortion. An aspect of it is subconscious - abortion may not affect the demographic situation at all, but may
appear to, but in any case the increasing fear has changed the political landscape if only by making certain issues much more prominent in an election cycle.
What I'm saying is that if this is what we're seeing in Britain at this moment, we should look for one of several possibilities: 1) Labour will win the next few elections; 2) some smart Labour "populist" will figure out how to harness this force, and Labour will become a combination of the traditional left that we all know and love/hate,
and populist/traditionalist white working-class anger; 3) old Labour loyalists will no longer recognize the leftist Labour that used to always lose so badly but their unrivalled success will all be couched in claims that the system should not allow a party to just change leaders so easily, or some similar innovation related to Brexit. Brexit is woven into here in a very complex way, in the sense that many people of both present parties actually supported it and in many cases for genuine reasons. Are we to say that fear of brown people is not one of them? Or fear of "other" (Poles, Hungarians, etc.)? We can always accuse people of racism, but in my opinion that just clouds the issue, and makes it that much more difficult to determine what is actually best for the country.
Demographics have already determined that this fear will be more and more prominent as time goes on. What this means is that first, the rise of fascism is that much more likely, and second, these changes might happen more quickly than any of us were prepared for. As an internationalist, one who really believes in the equality of people and the right of people of all colors to live on our land, I have always known we were in the minority. If white people want to make sure the US and Britain stay white or at least as white as they are today, what they need to do is make sure white people are having as many babies as everyone else. But the way to do that is to make having babies desirable, not outlaw abortion. Unwanted children only alter the political landscape by becoming criminals, and that ultimately doesn't help anyone.
MLB get your act together
I got sucked into the baseball playoffs this fall, and in fact I'm watching the Astros-Yankees series, game 2, as I write. Astros are winning. It's good to see them win since the Yankees beat my team, the Guardians, but at least the Guardians wore them down so they couldn't keep on winning. What I'm saying is that because of the Guardians, I got drawn into watching the later playoffs, even after the Guardians have been eliminated.
But this post is really about MLB and its schedule. Why are we trying to watch the best of baseball
after it's become too cold? The world series won't even
start until about Hallowe'en, and by then it's too late; we're bundled up; we have the car scrapers out; we're figuring out how to plow snow. This is not a time to watch baseball. Northern teams like New York have to ask people to stand out in the cold to watch them. This may be ok for Green Bay football, but it's not ok for baseball.
How did this happen? Greed, basically. Their season was too long. They made the playoffs longer. They couldn't cut off time at the beginning, couldn't cut the season's length. Why not? They needed the money, I guess. Everyone was ok with longer playoffs but nobody was ok with fewer games. So, now baseball goes through Souls' Day. And the ironic thing is, this being peak of football season, people care a lot less the later it gets. Baseball is a summer game and they just can't keep up their concentration while they're cutting wood.
There are three natural solutions: Make the season shorter; start earlier, and cut the playoffs back to where they were. Of the three, I like the first two better than the third, as playoff baseball is pretty good; I just don't want to be watching it when it's snowing. Actually the best solution would be
both of the first two, making the season
slightly shorter and starting
slightly earlier. Maybe the hotels in Florida and Arizona would be opposed to that, but, for baseball's survival, they have to do
something.
If you think about it, there's a metabolism factor going on in late October. We're either fanatically running around cutting wood and plasticking windows, or we're getting a book and crawling in bed preparing for a long hibernation. Football does ok with this. It's like it feeds off the energy of the first and relies on the couch-potato nature of the second; it's made for television. Baseball is not, so much. When we watch baseball it's because we want to be there, at the stadium. But we don't want that in late October.
Choose among the solutions above, MLB. Your survival depends on it.
general report
As many of you know, I've been steadily more and more sucked into the publishing business. I'm at 27 books on Amazon (
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Leverett/e/B00HCOJ882) - and that's down from a while ago, but I'm still working on more. It's marketing them that really takes most of my time. I've had a pretty good reception - in spite of being entirely 100 percent indie, I still do ok out in the world. But that's another post or two.
Things on the personal scene have convinced me that I should finish my "Language is a self-organizing system" book sooner rather than later. My wife and I are both getting older and most of our kids, but not all, will be achieving some measure of independence in the coming years. I, however, may never have the time or clarity of mind if I don't get to it pretty quickly. So I've been moving that to the front of the to-do list and even copied it out to read critically - I've actually written about 80 pages of it. My brother has been teaching linguistics so he may be helping me pull it together.
Some things on my bucket list, I may never get to. This includes learning Scottish Gaelic, which I think would be a perfect retirement occupation. I am retired and should theoretically be able to do whatever I want in this regard. My father began learning Chinese when he retired. But here's a difference: He never found enough people to speak it with. I am convinced that I can find enough, and that getting online and
finding them is part of the challenge.
I am now in the area of central Illinois where my grandchildren - well, step-grandchildren, actually, live - this means I should really start up the quilt that they are in line for. I have actually made three. But I have nine grandchildren now, so six more are waiting. And I'm actually spending more time with them. It's getting harder to tell them to "hold your horses" and wait!
On the book front, there are really several more that are dying to be finished. One is a continuation of the Leverett series: Prairie Leveretts. One is a book of Quaker plays. There is also a book of ESL reading exercises, but whenever I get close to it, I think, this is too much like work, and I put it down. Such is retirement. If you worked as hard as I did, you don't want to remember it every time you turn around.
That self-organizing book has to be written, though. It's called
Vowels in an Elevator. Keep your eyes open for it. One of these days you'll turn around, and it'll be done.
