Slow week

Sorry for the absence of postings, I've been really struggling this last week with ... eh, life, really. The support hose thing on my left leg really didn't help with that at all - thank god I'm free of that now, although I haven't seen any visible improvement in the foot/calf from the operation at all - fairly frustrating.

Otherwise, it's just winter, we're kinda huddling at home a lot - the weather is dry but bitterly cold, with a wind that bites to the bone some days. Still nice to see blue skies and sunshine in winter, I must say, compared to Englands endless soggy grey winters.

America

This is an excerpt from the blog of a friend of mine, Sarah in Chicago, who is about to return to NZ after a long period living in the USA - it sums up so much of what I feel about the place, I thought I'd grab part of it and republish (I wish I could have summed it up so pithily):

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I am completely expecting this to be a very large part of my homecoming soon. Particularly so given that I'm going to be moving into policy and political work as a career back in NZ, as while I definitely participated in politics before moving here, I really cut my teeth, as it were, in the cauldron that is American, and Chicago, political theatre. There are attributes of a vicious, vivacious, incredibly fast-moving, animal when it comes to US politics that really exists no where else in the world. The political world here is constantly changing, constantly moving, always shifting from one thing to the next, as issues of huge ramifications are debated, lost and won. Knives are being moved from one back to the next, just as acts of incredible self-less charity are given. There is passion and anger, joyfulness and celebration, utter sadness and dejection, love and sacrifice, here.

New Zealand politics are, as any kiwi will tell you, quite different. For a start, despite setting the course of a nation, they're simply not taken as seriously, In fact, culturally kiwis take nothing incredibly seriously. Not that we don't care, or that we make fun of such, but rather, the all-consuming nature of the way Americans approach most things is just something your average New Zealander would cock their eyebrow at and ask "Wot are ya, mate?". Our laid-back nature as a culture just doesn't allow us to care, or at least be seen caring, about anything the way Americans do about seemingly most things (except, naturally, about such things as beer, rugby, and having a fair-go). This cultural passion and approach to things is something I have certainly internalised.

And I have to say, I have moved to the Right on some political issues. The US centre politically is ridiculously to the Right ... almost to the point of caricature. What is considered reasonable right-leaning political positions are positions that anywhere else in the developed world, the Western world, would be rightly laughed out loud at. Don't get me wrong, I haven't gone insane and turned into a libertarian or any such nonsense. But I have repositioned myself to the pragmatic need for a strong military, for instance, and do tend to give police and such forces the benefit of the doubt. While as a sociologist I certainly come down on the side of the structural forces in society being the dominant cause of individual behaviour, I have definitely taken-on individual responsibility attitudes that I hadn't had previously. Don't get me wrong, even back in NZ I'm still going to be a left-winger, but I am a far more centrist one than I was before I left.

Then, of course, is the way Americans approach work. To an American, what you do for your career encapsulates in large part, if not in majority, who/what you are as a person. This is in part pragmatic, because so much of the American life is accessed via one's employment, from health-care to consumerism, to grilling and neighbourhood, credit and psyche. This is both in terms of the amount of one's income, but also where one's status is viewed to be located. Furthermore, it's also about how much Americans work. There is an absolute good seen in working as many hours as possible in the day, week, or whatever. Rooted in Calvinism, the US culture sees fundamentally how much time you spend working as a sign of effort and commitment, of how good you are as a person. This is something present across all of Western society, but only in the US has it taken on absolutist principals ... working oneself to death is not a euphemism here. You'll often over-hear on the subway professionals boasting of, as part of their everyday conversations, how many hours they've been putting in ... being 'busy' is taken to be the regular state of affairs.

And I will admit, I've totally bought into such. I find a lot of pleasure and worth in sitting in a cafe late at night, working ... in getting up with the dawn, grabbing my espresso, knowing that I'm getting into the office before most, owning a part of the day most people don't see ... in getting home in time to just grab some food before bed, just as I know I'll be getting up early to repeat the day over-again. One of the things I am really looking forward to once I am back is working after-hours in cafes around Wellington. I expect I'm going to be putting in more hours than your average kiwi ... and I'm going to love it.

There are, however, things I haven't taken on, that I remain most emphatically a kiwi, as well as Dutch, over. The consumerism of the US society, where everything requires money and/or an assessment of your ability to pay, where any misstep can doom you for life, at the same time as making self-worth require getting as close to that misstep as possible. Not to mention the related insane individualism of the culture, where a society's responsibility, or the need to relinquish one's rights to the benefit of society as a while, are seen as evil and hideous concepts (as evidenced by the treatment of Sonia Sotomayor currently). The US really needs to get beyond this if it is to mature as a nation, right past wrongs, and gain respect. The same for the high focus on competitiveness, where one needs to the best in everything, or one is nothing. Where everything (and I do mean everything) is hierarchically organised and ranked ... a mentality that leads to ignoring any and all weakness or fault, an absolutism that can produce nothing but disaster, depression, and American exceptionalism as absolute good, as difference is not prised for its diversity, but rather questioned as to level of worth. Then there is the pervasive displays of religion everywhere, in everything, something that for New Zealanders is highly offensive, where religion, and any reference to such, is considered a personal, and highly private, thing.

But, that all said, there is a beauty and wonderfulness about America that I have experienced nowhere else. While the American Dream is precisely that, a dream and a myth, the ideal that if one just works hard enough one can fix any problem, solve any issue, and go places no-one has gone before, means that as a country America will try things and do things that no other nation will. It believes in itself in ways that no other nation does. Sure, this gets it into trouble quite often, as it will meddle where it has no invite nor experience, not listening to the advice and knowledge of other more mature societies. Or it will over-simplify like a teenager, earnestly thinking that no one else has come up with a particular idea ever before in history, ideas that will solve everything.

But occasionally, just occasionally, it can live up to that ideal, and in doing so, like no other nation on earth, it is glorious and wonderful. It will trip over its huge gawky feet regularly, but those feet will carry it to places from time to time, that no one else really has never been before. This is a country that birthed the civil-rights movement, the feminist movement, the LGBT movement, etc ... movements that, while here still have a long way to go, had ramifications throughout the world, reverberating through time and space. America embodies the best and worst of humanity ... it is the excesses and extremes of our species and societies, the incredible highs to which it can succeed, and the depths that it can descend to. It is risk personified as a nation, that which holds not just our darkest fears, but also most cherished dreams as a world.

And it this hope, this positivity, that I have really garnered living here ... Americans believe, fervently, in their core, that things can, and will, get better, if only one believes that they can. I love this country for that. When I speak to my students about issues in America, I want them to reclaim this country, as I have investment in it, as I see its worth and possibilities as my own. As annoyingly grating as every other culture in the world finds America's insane optimism as a nation, something I will say I too wince at often, there remains the fact that to an American, the phrase "that's just the way things are" is not an explanation, but rather a call to change.

So, as teenager-ish as this country is, for all it's faults and for all it's beauty and wonder, just as I call myself Dutch, and a New Zealander, I can call myself an American.

I have become an American.
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Unlike Satah, I have not yet become an American, and I'm not sure I ever will, being a lot older and crustier by the time I got here (I certainly didnt become English even with 7 years there)... but it is quite an insidiously inviting place, and I probably will slide into Americanity, at least in some parts (and of course there are some bits where I was already there, like being assertive with restaurant service). Mind you, when someone tells me of all the extra hours they work here, my reaction is still, You can't be very good at your job if you need to work extra hours! and somehow I doubt that will ever change.

Update: I forgot to say, I have some amazing bruises today, & spent the weekend very sedately.

We have been spending part of our weekends looking at houses around Little Rock, mostly open houses of course: however, in the last few weeks we've been skipping that, as it's been too hot and humid to stomach it, even for relatively short exposures dashing to/from houses on show.

However, we had been ruminating over various ideas, and one that Cat suggested, seemed worth checking out a bit more, which is the idea of settling a bit further out of town, trading some commuting time for cheaper price and more land/privacy. I had a look on craigslist.com, and spotted one that looked very appealing - 22 minute drive to my office, 4 bedroom, on 4.5 acres of land.

We drove out on Sunday, and wow - now I see why a friend of mine calls it liarslist.com ... lets just say, if that was 4 acres, then we're currently living in Buck House: and I can't believe they could have squeezed 4 bedrooms into a house that small (we didn't get out of the car). Rather than privacy, it offered neighbours crowding up with a perfect oversight over the yard.

We haven't given up on the idea, but I'll be taking the ads with a good grain of salt in future.

In fact, we are thinking more and more, that if my firm accedes in my taking my job with me, we will shift to somewhere else, anywhere where the firm has offices and a spare desk to house me. As I'm already working remote from the client site, it would seem to make no real difference where I work from, and there may well be quite a few more desirable options - somewhere out of the south, is I think what we need.

Not that it will necessarily be great elsewhere, but the mulish intransigence of the racist, sexist conservatives (of both political parties) is at times quite overpowering, and constantly wearing. I think what outrages both of us most - but of course, in the nature of it, Cat runs into most commonly - is what I can only call an Alpha-male dickheadedness: a man in a position of petty power, who will throw his weight about and attempt to bully his customers into submitting to his dictates in order to prove his superiority and Alpha-ness.

As you can imagine, that goes over like a Lead Zeppelin with Cat: I must admit, I've been very proud of her recently, as she has stopped biting back, getting equally angry, and having loud flaming rows. Instead, she has been able to hold her temper, and instead just withdraw and not engage with this bullshit. Of course, this sometimes means we don't buy something quite as we'd planned, but that's nothing compared to preserving her (or our) integrity and sense of selfworth.

It just amazes me, how often this sort of thing seems to emerge - and presumably this technique works for these dickheads, at least often enough that they continue to use it (assuming, of course, that they ever realise that there are alternatives, which is moot). But it's not just Cat, we've both encountered it, at AT&T, Best Buy, Bale Honda (a particularly loathesome sales manager), Borders, just to rattle off the first few that popped into my head.

I suspect we'll encounter some of this anywhere we go, in the States: I think it's some sort of aggressive male-reinforcing bullshit that just gets sucked up & repeated. It's impossible to imagine an English manager acting like this (but then it's impossible to imagine an American manager pulling the usual English passive-aggressive rubbish.

Still, both this, and the overt racism and sexism that both genders evince fairly constantly here, might well be less prevalent outside the South - and Arkansas is pretty much the most backward part of the States (well, yeah, Mississippi and Alabama might push it to a draw there). We can but hope :)

Little Rock

I should try and give you some idea of what Little Rock is like, as much as I can. It's a bit more than 500,000 people for the Greater Little Rock area - roughly the same as Greater Wellington (i.e. Wellington, the Hutt, and the Gold coast area).

Like Gaul*, it's divided into three, no four parts: the city centre, West Little Rock, North Little Rock, and South Little Rock - east LR doesn't really exist as it's just a river port plus some industrial parks, trailing off into rice paddies & commercial fish ponds . The whole city is quite hilly by European standards (nothing like as hilly as Wellington, but far from flat, too): not big hills, but a lot of (200-300 foot) ridges, on both sides of the river.

The city centre feels pretty gutless and empty - literally, not as a metaphor for courage. There are half a dozen highrises: I work on the 8th floor of the largest (by far), a 46-story behemoth, I would guess none of the others rise more than 20 or 25 stories. The rest of it consists of the Capitol (a miniature imitation of the DC Capitol), and a lot of 2/3 story commercial buildings. What makes it feel gutless is the almost total absence of shops, of any sort. There are a few food shops & takeaway places, to feed all the office-dwellers and other denizens of these mysterious buildings - most are unlabelled, or at best bearing obscure modest signage giving little or no hint of purpose.

Other than that, there are a lot - and I mean a ton - of empty shop slots: this is not due to the recent downturn, most of them have been like this since before we arrived, and many for quite a few years, judging from the neglect. There are also a few bars, but those are scattered around the periphery of the city proper: oh, and there's the River Market (positioned beside the Arkansas River, open on Saturdays), which has a couple of small attached streets of restaurants and bars, which I think supports a fairly peppy nightlife in the evenings (not being drinkers, we haven't really investigated).

It certainly feels weird, driving through the city area in the weekends - except near the River Market, it feels very much like driving through Wellington at 8 a.m. on Christmas morning - empty to a fare-thee-well, echoing streets, whispering pavements.

West Little Rock is where we live: the area extending west, but south of the Arkansas river. The piece of it closest to the city centre is full of old houses of great character (but usually small), dating from 80 or more years ago I would guess: then bit next to the river (on a high ridge) is a series of suburbs where the prices are sky-high (well, by local standards), with a lot of pseudo-mansions - and real ones - and quite a number of interesting, quirky boutiques & small shopping centres, not to mention my favourite cafe.

After that, the West trails off into an apparently endless series of middle-class, moderate suburbs, 3 or 4 bedroom bungalows & split-levels, usually brick, on polite wellscrubbed sections, interspersed with shopping strips (what they call strip-malls) full of chain-shops, looking more or less identical. Oh, and not a sidewalk or pavement to be seen - the developers seemed to deem it an unnecessary expense sometime in the 60s, so they simply don't exist: if you want to walk along, you have to walk on the verge of peoples' lawns. Not exactly characterful, but pleasant and anodyne. Yes, this is us, at the moment :)

Oh, and I should mention, you are not permitted a fence on the front of your property that exceeds waist height (the rear yard can have a privacy fence up to 7' tall, and many do).

Separating WLR from South Little Rock is a motorway (the I630), which forms a fairly solid demarcation. SLR is still suburbs, but generally poorer - more timber construction, often smaller sections, less fencing (and most of that chain-link). Interspersed amongh those are pockets of real, well, poverty and neglect, of a quite shocking level - many houses burnt out, or boarded up, or just quarantined behind police-tape, and most of the rest looking semi-deserted and neglected. If there's a pattern to them, I haven't detected it - I expect it is dictated by some underlying pattern of resources, but I guess you'd have to live there for quite a while to become aware of it.

More alarmingly, from what little I've observed in the last 12 months, those pockets of, well, obviously drug-dealers & users, seem to migrate around SLR, which must make the rest of the inhabitants feel a bit desperate: like waiting for a tornado to destroy your neighbourhood property values, without having even a shelter to hide in.

SLR seems (to a very casual observation) to be primarily non-white: but don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say there is segregation in housing, it's much more just an effect of class, and as always in America, non-whites are shoved down the economic ladder. I haven't seen any signs of overt racism in the housing market, unless I'm missing the nod&awink signals - which is quite possible of course.

The Arkansas river itself is quite substantial - I would guess about twice the width of the Hutt, and deeper& stronger: it's used quite a lot for barge traffic, as it feeds into the Father of Waters, and reaches up into the Plains quite a distance.

North Little Rock is across the Arkansas River from the city centre, and extends up the bank opposite WLR. It is more or less the lower middle-class & working class area: there's a very noticeable rise in the presence of gunracks on trucks, not to mention Confederate flags, beer emblems and faded McCain/Palin stickers. I did contemplate renting here at first, as prices are obviously cheaper, but the longer commute times, and the overall feeling of, well, conservativism (and the enormous, staggering number of gigantic, lavish, over the top expensive churches), really deterred both of us.

Well, not sure that really gives you a good idea of what it's like here, but so it goes.





*Asterix the Gaul joke :)