Five things I just learnt from Wikipedia

Bored at work again...

1. Rokkaku Yoshiharu (Rokkaku Yoshiharu,六角 義治; 1545-1612) the eldest son of Rokkaku Yoshikata.
2. "You Got It" is a song by Roy Orbison.
3. Soyuz T-2 (Russian: Союз Т-2, Union T-2) was the 10th expedition to Salyut 6.
4. Shin-Toride Station (新取手駅, Shin-Toride-eki?) is a train station in Toride, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan.
5. Morale, also known as esprit de corps when discussing the morale of a group, is an intangible term used for the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal, or even in oneself and others.

Five Misters

...that I remember.

Mr Boombastic,
Say me fantastic.

Mr Meaker,
Entrepreneurial ghost employer.

Mr Motivator,
Full name, Derrick Motivator.

Mr Udigawa,
Japanese businessman with a fixation on Erinsborough.

Mr Big,
They’re the ones that wanted to be with you.

My top five favourite Dickensian names.

5. Uriah Heep
4. Sir Mulberry Hawk
3. Newman Noggs
2. Seth Pecksniff
1. Wackford Squeers

Kuuoolwait.

Fun, foam, and wahaam under dusty desert skies.

At Kuwait City International Airport chaos and apathy abound. As an initial impression it was apposite.

First came the chaos.

Rescued by my diplomatic representative, we drove into the city. I arrived on the eve of the National/Liberation day holidays, which was why a young man stood in front of our car, now stationary on a three-lane highway, performing a sort of belly dance. Welcome to Kuwait. We’re happy to see you.

As far as I could tell during the next couple of days, this holiday seemed to consist, and only consist, of driving to the main seafront road to sit in gridlock whilst spraying each other with party foam. It’s apt in a nation so young that their main national celebration takes the form of one long big kids party.

That’s all they did. No parades, no concerts. Just kids stood on the side of the road, occasionally weaving across the highway; children jumping in and out of cars, spraying foam and spraying each other. You give and you get, and you get even if you had no intention of giving. Some dress in the national colours, even if the national colours are represented in a natty Mohawk wig, others literally wrap themselves in the flag. It’s all great to see from a balcony above the action, but when you’re down there and you have to say, get somewhere, then it’s no longer a spectacle but an adventure.

Driving in Kuwait is an adventure anyway. At the best of times it’s dangerous; at worse, homicidal. You soon conclude that road signs are intended to warn, are actually offering a choice of consequences: prison or death. One of these is an eventual outcome for every Kuwaiti driver. However, this choice is usually made traveling at speed. On this holiday, the escapade was a low-velocity caper. Having to get to the airport, our skilled and fearless driver nudged, hooted, accelerated hard, braked harder, gestured, mounted, and generally did anything and everything except kill or maim to reach the terminal in time - all, it should be said with a good foaming ready and waiting at every pause. I think I found myself a new hero that day – composed under spray, and still stylish after a gunking.

However, everything else in Kuwait seems tinged with apathy. Those wearing red, white, green and black may express a love of country, but it’s hard for this outsider to understand the source. Even the environment is apathetic. It's like nature couldn't be bothered to do anything more than just show-up, announcing here's your firmament, I'm off to sculpt the alps. There’s nothing but scrub. The only green is artificial, the horizon is flat less it be broken by one of the sleek new constructions, or some shell that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the Iraqi’s were in town.

At Friday market the dust dry air dehydrates as you wander a series of open warehouses that at times resemble little more than a scrap market. Nearby, the animal market offers a menagerie of birds, chickens, turkeys, fish, and a solitary scared and pitiful looking deer. The Avenue, the spotless new shopping mall, provides an arena for young men and women to flirt indirectly through looks and text messages. The retailers may be British, the food and drink maybe American, but the cultural norms are firmly Arabic.

My diplomatic representative explained how this is the real nanny state. Oil money provides a generous paternal welfare society for native Kuwaitis. But that money doesn’t get invested in anything other than big cars and spending the hottest four months of the year abroad. One of her colleagues put it in context, “It’s like Dubai twenty-five years ago, before anyone cared”. Dubai’s problems may be manifest, but the intent was understandable. Not blessed with the oil reserves of its neighbours it looked for some other way to get rich. Those other states may be getting the message from Dubai, but are still too reliant on the oil teat. Consider that Kuwait has two middle-classes. One is based on the private sector, the other on the public sector. The public sector middle-class is 95 percent Kuwaiti and government (read, oil) based. The private middle-class is almost entirely foreign born. This may not matter at The Avenue where Dinars are Dinars whoever is spending them, but the public sector lacks an entrepreneurial drive, political impact, and the ability to sustain economic growth over time. Everything is fine until the oil tide recedes, but then Kuwait will be standing on the beach without any underpants. When it does, do you think the private sector middle-class is going to stick around the dusty, dry crotch of the Gulf?

The journey to the airport for my departure. One final adventure thrill ride on the highways. After pleasantries, the Bangladeshi taxi driver began to open up about how much he misses home and his family. How tired he is after sixteen years here, and fifteen-hour days on these crazy roads. How little sleep he gets, how he resents the Kuwaiti boss who takes the big cut of the money he makes. It’s getting on for 10.00pm. He asks me if London is nice. I’m ready to launch into my dirty, crowded, expensive city speech when I catch myself. What had I seen in the Gulf? Dirt behind the daydream. Yes, London is nice, I'm lucky to go home. This was the hardest place I’d ever been too.

“I never had any other ambition than to be with her”, he stated. “I never wanted to jump out of a plane, climb a mountain, visit here, there or anywhere; they’d have gotten on fine with or without me.” This seemed to me like an invitation for a supplementary question. “So”, I asked him, “What is the most exciting thing one can do?” His answer came in an instant, and with an assertion only a deliberated certainty provides: “Finding the one you love and who loves you. That’s the miracle through the ages. Everything else? A badly taken picture or a story to bore people”. Did he ever? I enquired. “Partly”, he cut across me with a half-smile, the type signifying a termination of that particular subject of discussion. The story would remain private, yet the rueful pain evident in that brief expression communicated everything I needed to know.

Antonin Vogshea, Remembrance in Blue.

Dubai

Adventures on the 8A, late-night souqing, steel and glass, and stalking minor TV celebrities.

I had heard this was the place. I'm on this plane; flying in ignorance, wired in naivete. All I know was they decided to build this place. They wanted a Hong Kong and New York so they decided to have one. From nothing. Face down place and nature, impose what they want, because they could. It seemed perfect. Forget distant faces, distant memories. I wanted to drown in sunshine, let it bleach me clean. Nothing but a spotless mind, no stain of me. Wisdom hurts. I want to see the world in innocence. Disregard experience. Abandon responsibility. Fashion. Make. Model. Perfect. I'm flying but I'm flowing. Speed hurtling aggression surrender into a freedom world. I'm an hour from landing, but I'm never touching down.

Qusor Waham.

Are great cities enigmatic? Is elusiveness the attraction, the quality that denotes greatness? If so, I wonder about Dubai. It is building itself into a great city, but the greatness may be quantified rather than a quality.

Dubai's importance comes from the critical question of our age: can we balance prosperity and sustainability? Dubai is clear in its answer: fuck sustainability, let's consume. Modern Dubai is an eco-terror. Its bold dismissal of nature is everywhere - golf courses and ski-slopes in the desert, islands built in the sea, and air-conditioned shopping malls as big as English provincial towns. It's a city spreading and devouring with dizzying speed and an insatiable appetite.

The old Dubai used its environment - sea stone, shells, mud and palms to build houses with wind towers to keep cool. It fished for food and dove for pearls to survive. But, Dubai wanted big. Modern Dubai survives on marble, glass and steel; on oil and credit, on the backs of the Asian sub-continent and through the wallets of Europe and North America. To me it's a phoney metropolis: a magnificent in spectacle, but all surface, no feel. It's an antiseptic place; clean on the surface. The dirt is there, you know it, but it's not immediately visible. It's sequestered in boardrooms, confiscated passports, construction workers camps, and in the settlement that enough people are making too much or just enough money to cause any trouble. It's at its worse in imagined Arabia, where capitalism appropriates a skeletal cultural frame of refernece to flesh out with generic retailers and restaurants. Example A: the Ibn Battuta Mall is more Hannah Montana's world than Ibn Battuta's. The revelation came at example B, the Souq Madinat Jumeirah: modern Dubai is desperate to be loved. It's the kid at school with parents that bought the best and newest games. You go round, play with them, ignore him because he's boring and don't care if you break anything because its not yours anyway. Modern Dubai is consumed with a self-consciousness and preoccupation with image that's alienating and unlovable. See example C; on exiting the Mall of the Emirates, who was walking by but Vianetta Felt*. There she was: a straight-up low wattage star looking like she'd walked of the set of another poorly judged TV appearance. Wearing a spangly dress showing far too much leg, with partner and daughter in escort, she looked less a million dollars, more 150 quid in used notes. Of course, I turned on my heel and followed them - well, you'd want to know what the family Felt gets up to on their holidays wouldn't you (it was a night at the cinema; no, I don't know what they saw). But it's a metaphor for modern Dubai. It's where you'd expect to find minor TV celebrities. Not showbiz enough for real glamour and fame, but a better place than Great Yarmouth in February (sorry Jane Macdonald). Cause or effect? Not sure. But Dubai, you can't buy class, just someone once voted 93rd worst living Briton.**

*To save embarrassment, not least mine, names have been changed.
**According to Wikipedia.

Get on the bus if you want a different city. Dubai buses are familiar: they're packed, irregular, and take ages to get anywhere (not that you're confident about where they're going). But they're ahead of the service in my English provincial town. When on, the drivers tend not to be sociopaths (they're kept busy trying to avoid accidents in all the appalling driving) and they'll get you from port to souq cheaply (rare in Dubai), cleanly, and with air-conditioning (even the bus stops themselves). However, the only time you'll see an Emirate on the bus is when he's the guy in charge and pulling us few westerners out of line for preferential treatment, while giving the poor immigrant (of course) driver a roasting for not doing this himself. The rest of the time though it's like riding in a little south-Asia with a lot of south-Asians. Did I mention it was crowded? Don't expect anything less than seventy people (all men, the few ladies have seats at the front) packed in as you roll down towards Jurimah. And make sure you can see where you need to exit (believe me, I somehow failed to notice us passing world's tallest hotel) and make an effort to push your way towards the door well before your stop. It's a squeeze-on, shove-off service.

However, the Dubai to enjoy, the Dubai impressing the fondest memory, is close to the creek at night. At times I felt my reaction was close to poverty tourism, but grit, heart and soul, buzz and activity, and life, hard life, was here. It's home to the souqs, the commercial centre of town. In the evening when its colour and activity is no longer drowned out by the sun, doors open, conversations fill the streets and open spaces, while music mingles with chatter and traffic. You can wander with little attention paid to you because, like everyone else, you are here, but not of here. You wander past the small stores: busy barbers, gold stores, and electrical retailers. You can take the narrow alleyways with their sweatshop tailors - six men hunched over machines looking up with alarm when you linger in the doorway for just a trace too long. Then you head towards midnight. The souqs finish trading and the markets pack away. A badminton net is strung across the arcade, elsewhere cricket bats and tennis balls are brought out and pick-up games begin across the neighbourhood. Leaving Deira Dubai, I crossed the creek by abra - one of the small wooden taxies that run from side-to-side all hours of the day. On the other side, in Bur Dubai, the bustle is less perceptible but still present. A frenzy of small fish gathers where men lean over the creek to drop scraps into the water. The souq is empty save for trash and shadows. Further down the path there is a film crew setting up for a travel piece. As I pass them, I walk in front of the Grand Mosque and for the first time experience a rare, grateful, moment of solitude. But it's late and I can't linger, so I move along Al Mussalah past Indian laundries sweating the day's work clean, clothes bundled onto bicycles parked outside the door. On corners there are a few late night stores, their doors open to shine light across the darker streets. Wherever you find yourself, Dubai is a city of night.

Dubai is a wonder. It is, arguably, the centre of the world right now: where east meets west. It is the twenty-first century city. And for all the above, it's a pretty liberal place for the region. I mean, if not Dubai, then Rhiad or Yemen? But it is a conflicted place. Even my exit summed up the good and bad. My driver to the airport seemed to pull a figure from somewhere that I didn't see on the meter. I stated that I was leaving the country and didn't have that amount on me (way more than the taxi I took from the airport three days before), and no, he wasn't getting a tip. Yet twenty minutes later, the official at passport control stamped my exit visa, closed my passport, and on top of it, placed a sweet. And that's Dubai.

Come on up for the rising: Inauguration '09.

It could prove to be a transitory occasion, its historical resonance little more than a trace. But for a moment it felt important to be stood there on a cold, clear Washington DC morning.

I.
Miles of portable toilets signified something descending on the city. Flags hung from the Capitol, bunting adorned buildings, roads closed, troops marched the streets, satellite trucks parked alongside the Smithsonian museums, banks of seating and fencing appeared along Pennsylvania Avenue, whilst street merchandisers hawked t-shirts and badges of varying levels of garishness and suspect quality at regular intervals - and appeared to be generating the kind of business that could yet pull America out of recession. It was cold, ice rested on the Potomac, but the days were fresh, dry and clear. And the city was heaving with people. Even the usually lightly populated Metro almost felt like a good natured Central Line, as personal space was politely compromised by groups (although not, as they reminded us, the New Yorkers) navigating the unfamiliar concept of public transportation (stand to the left people, the left!). From the single name sported on badges, sweaters, t-shirts and caps you knew they had come as pilgrims, from redwood forests and Gulf Stream waters and (ahem) beyond. "They interviewed some guy from Ireland" said one local as I rode the bus, "I didn't get a word he said. I know he was speaking English but...whoa". I kept quiet. The DC social calendar filled with events related to that single name, which is how I came to be mamboing at 2.00 a.m. on a Monday morning. There was an inauguration coming.

The usual District political crowd I suspect got the bulk of the inaugural tickets and society invitations, while other locals felt a four day holiday was too good to stay around town for, especially with all these outsiders wandering the city. But just to walk the streets gave a sense of what this event meant and to whom. Outside the invitations, the White House, the Capitol, the Mall, this land was their land. It felt like a benign invasion, like a public reclamation. Every face slowly wandering and posing in front of the Capitol or White House seemed to posses a new years day smile. As the dark clouds that descended eight years before lifted, it was like people were coming out to just see and feel the sun that had been absent for so long.

II.
Despite fears that city would collapse under the weight of visitors, my inauguration day went smoothly. At 5.30 a.m. I was up then on one of the many (free - that's change we can believe in!) buses running Columbia Pike. On the Metro it wasn't long to wait with my "Fired up! Ready to Go!" travelling companions before surrendering to the wave of people carrying everyone up, out, and on to the Mall. I did have a plan, but when you're part of a river of people moving in one direction, only the strong swim against the current.

I ended up on the Mall about a mile from the Capitol sometime around 6.30 a.m. And the sight will live: a new dawn. Literal and metaphorical. The night merging into orange, blue and grey; soundtracked by anticipation: the excited chatter and the occasional chant of "O-bam-a! O-bam-a!" I'd seen it before in DC, but when the first rays of sun reflected from the Capitol dome, something that had previously just been beautiful, in a moment, became something powerful in significance. Daylight always follows darkness.

And then we waited. The magic of dawn and the initial rush of arriving gave way to the realisation of just how long we were going to be stood there. The American Girl Scouts moved through the crowd handing out miniature American flags because no matter how spontaneous the moment felt, orchestration was never that far away. People chatted to keep warm, others hid under fleeces and tried to sleep on the ground, I rocked from foot to foot attempting to keep loose. Here we were, the Obama demographic. Around me were a bunch of collage grads who'd volunteered down in Georgia, some undergraduates from nearby George Washington University, a bohemian looking couple - all facial hair and piercing who'd probably exhibited a few paintings in coffee shops up in Portland. By now I was making up biographies to keep warm. One I didn't invent though was the African-American woman in front of me who had taken a sick day to be here. Why? Because her job wouldn't let her take a personal day the day after a holiday. It's a reminder that the biggest commitments aren't always reflected in distance. Around 7.30 she tried to call into work "sick" but every attempt to place the call was foiled by either a helicopter overhead or spontaneous chants of "O-bam-a! O-bam-a!" At 8.00 came my favourite chant: "Four more hours". I reflected on the duality: four more hours in the context of eight years sounded so sweet, but in the context of a cold morning was deflating. Soon after, the large video screens provided thankful visual and auditory stimulation to the huddling masses when Sunday's "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration" concert was broadcast. I had missed this because I did not know about it. Instead I'd adopted an attitude to my trip of spontaneity. Taking a few cornerstones as a key around which to venture but not being able to say exactly what will happen. Instead I reacted to my immediate surroundings, moods, invitations, and interactions with familiar and unfamiliar faces. I made some connections and missed others. In this case, I'd instead been touring the seven floors of weirdness to be found at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Arlington. Watching the concert though, Abe looked on. Abe always looks on, nothing moves Abe. But to those of us that don't belong to the ages though, everyone sounded good. I say this knowing that I stood and watched Garth Brooks singing "Shout". I say it knowing that Jon Bon Jovi got up to duet on "A Change is Gonna Come". I can't believe it, but they did. Springsteen sounded magnificent with "The Rising". And then joined in with a near ninety year old Pete Seeger - blacklisted in the 1950s, singing here for the new president and leading the crowd in that alternative (superior) American anthem, "This Land is Your Land". He looked like he was enjoying it and who could blame him. Well, "maybe that's why it seemed to last twenty minutes, I'm sure Pete was making up a few verses along the way" commented a man near me. Abe, who had a useful quote about pleasing people, continued to say nothing.

Around 10.00 a.m. the screens switched to live coverage. And there they were, The Rising. The sight, the noise of recognition from two million people perhaps realising that it's one thing to feel part of something important, but another to see yourself in something as powerful as a mass of humanity stretching for miles. Being amongst it was quite unlike any other large body of people I've found myself in. People knew who the bad guys were, booing Lieberman, Cheney and Bush, and cheered the good guys (the Clintons) and went crazy with every sight of the president-elect and the soon-to-be first family. There was no pushing or shoving, it wasn't aggressive, hostile or teetering on anarchy. A respectful distance was kept for all, and while this was nice, it was not what I could have done with. I was counting on the penguin effect to help keep me warm. Then it was time. At 12.04 p.m. Obama took the oath of office. A million people were silent and engaged. Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath. I was looking down willing my near dead camera into a last breath of life. Wait. Did Roberts screw that up? Did Obama screw it up? He promises to "execute the office faithfully"? It's "faithfully execute", it's in the constitution. Is he not president? Is this a Cheney inspired coup (who, after all appointed Roberts). See what the last eight years had done? Already I was sensing legal challenges speeding towards courts, and the punditocracy racing to opinionise on the oathgate. "So help me God". Cheers. Arms raised: half to wave flags, half to take pictures. I got my picture. It's badly focused, the guy in front has his arm across a quarter of the shot, you can't see any identifying landmarks - the stars and stripes aside it could have been anywhere. But I love it. I know it wasn't anywhere. It's raw, it's the moment. And can never be replicated.

To me, the inauguration address did not match the high of election night. Maybe this was an effect of the cold and tiredness - in zero degree weather even witnessing history can pall if it goes on a bit too long. I sensed those around, like me, were waiting for the magic riff, the "yes we can", the "no red states or blue states" moment. There were flashes but the moment never came. Maybe on reflection that was smart. America didn't need rousing, the party's is clearly over. Instead the address was reflective and affirmatory, but not delusional or abstract, it was pointed but not accusing. It was, as we are learning, typical Obama. That said, we cheered ("We will restore science to its rightful place" - OK, that was just me), applauded, waved flags, took pictures, smiled and grinned at the change all around and when the new president finished, turned, left behind flags, papers, and general trash, and headed for the exit. To the sound of a poet stumbling, stiff limbs shuffled, faces rubbed sore by the chill wind, we pooled into a torrent of people onto the streets, spilling into Metro stations like they were a drain, and when full, running onto the next possible way home. And that was it. It's an odd feeling making history and then wondering what you're going to do with the afternoon. By lunchtime the show was all over. All that remained was time to reflect.

III.
Occasionally the cameras had cut to a brooding looking (now former) President Bush. With every rebuke ("we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals") number 43 had the appearance of a stooge with dawning awareness at how stitched up he has been. Played by Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld, left with his name on a slovenly legacy. For a moment I felt sympathy. However, this was a man who wanted to be a great transforming president but wasn't prepared to match the intellectual or emotional demands such leadership requires, and lacked the luck of Ronald Reagan. He failed. Unfortunately, his failings are our consequences. Attempting transformation on the cheap has in political and financial terms left a legacy of rancorous partisanship, myriad incompetence, and poisonous politicisation. I can't say if the resounding and universal boos and spotted choruses of "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" were audible on the West front, but if his approval rating, the election result, and the none too subtle digs from number 44 weren't enough, then he's never going to get the message. Later on the news I saw Bush's departure from Washington. I'm sure there are deposed leaders of banana republics who've taken a fonder, lingering farewell glance as they're bundled into a Mercedes and sped off to the airport. Bush looked like he couldn't get away quickly enough, and at least a million plus that had stood outside all morning couldn't wait to see him gone.

IV.
There is a quasi-religious feeling around Obama. You see it in people and their reactions, you see it in the inauguration coverage, you see it in the merchandise on the DC streets. I found it myself as a broken-hearted outsider wandering around New Hampshire back in 2007. Arriving with little expectation, looking for some distraction for a few weeks, by the end of my time there I felt like a disciple. A convert to the cause and convinced in its victory because I've never met a more impressive group of people than the New Hampshire Obama staff. I believed. And it felt so good to someone usually sceptical, cynical and caustic to believe in something. To find meaning in someone is intoxicating. Reflecting on it now, I feel that in Obama we find our own meaning, redemption, aspiration. The beautiful articulate writer of Dreams from my Father; the powerful, inspiring speaker on race; the icon in Shepard Fairey's "Hope" image; and, we hope, wise leader of the free world. I think we find these things because he is a mirror of what we wish we could be - apparently serene and calm within himself, someone easy with who he is and where he's from. Someone transcending the hurts, grievances, and resentments that damage us all to whatever degree, someone who found their self and their place.

But I still don't know how to understand "Change". It's the verb that won the election, brilliantly utilised, so open to investment in an election where retrospective voting evidently favoured the challenger. But in government, what does "Change" mean? Verb or a noun? Reactive or proactive? Radical or bounded? Coherent or pragmatic? Change to broadly progressive policy goals or bipartisan government? Both would be change, both were suggested in the campaign, but sadly, they seem mutually exclusive. Being progressive or liberal is an anathema to the current Republican Party, and stellar political capital can only get you so far so often. Four years, after all, is a long time with a lot of decisions in-between. Likewise, I suspect bipartisanship, while essential in a system of separate institutions sharing power was not what this movement was about. Over five years ago I started meeting "anyone but Bush" people; people supporting any candidate simply capable of getting the Republicans out of office. These people provided such initial energy to the Dean campaign and delivered Kerry the 2004 nomination. They did not go away; instead they grew larger and better organised. This is not to disparage Barack Obama, a far better candidate than simply being an "anyone but Bush". However, that movement was out there and was waiting for a candidate. I suspect that was the larger meaning connecting the vast humanity stretching out along the Mall and anyone involved in the campaign, anyone who put life and careers on hold for absurd hours and demands and little-to-zero financial recompense. It didn't mean a new republic, but nor did change mean another term of a co-opted conservative agenda. At some point "Change" is going to have to mean something, and somebody is going to be disappointed.

I recalled a moment from my arrival. As I came into land I looked out of the plane's window. What appeared below resembled a universe. Fixed, ordered constellations of fluttering orange and white stars, whilst sluggish flowing streams of light connected distant galaxy-like clusters. Life looked slow. Near still and alien. Unknowing and unknowable. Yet on the ground, America feels uneasy. A confident front masks insecurity. Its vast middle-class increasingly predicated on the realisation they are one accident, illness, or profit margin from financial calamity. It spends more than it earns, consumes more than can be sustained. It is a nation in lingering shock at atrocities committed inside its borders and the consequences of that day. Its health care coverage is terrifying both in cost and the gaps it leaves exposed. Its great tradition and weapon of learning is increasingly eroded as education becomes a more expensive and exclusive commodity. It's a people finding modern life a race to stand still, only to find the pace increasing to a sprint. And if you want a warning of what life is like outside the race, look at those exposed to Katrina. Times are tough. America may stumble, but "...we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America", commanded the new president. And nobody but America could. Nobody does hope like America. Nobody does redemption like America. It seems paradoxical a nation that gives such weight to innocence, freedom, individuality, mobility, and universalism - all anti-history, anti-place values, is able to embrace its history and place in such an affirming way. Despite its diminished stature and the battering of the last eight years, I felt the pride in the moment from nearly everyone I encountered. It wasn't even necessarily pride in Obama, but a pride ultimately in themselves as a people, and a nation. No wonder the inauguration ceremonies so frequently invoked Columbia's apotheosised sons: Washington, Roosevelt (T. and F.), Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, and King, this was an explicit connection of this moment to the past. It felt that in their hearts everyone seemed happy to have not remade, but recovered their country. Maybe the moment was transitory, and maybe nothing in the streets will look any different to me, and maybe the slogans will be replaced by-the-by. But I still feel that only America could have made and elected Barack Obama just when it needed to - and that's the American genius. I am more certain that even if the world is not much of a better place in the next four years, it would have been a worse one if January 20, 2009 belonged to anyone else than the millions around me. And that was more than enough reason to celebrate.

Bruce Forsyth and the English genius.

I sit here with a cold. I haven't done much but hover and float from the start of the day to its finish, drifting though moments of melancholy and optimism, slightly disconnected from reality but all the while knowing that it's just about time to snap out of this funk and get and do something. But, these moments of lucidity instead provide realisation the that for all the changes Britain has seen over the past few decades Bruce Forsyth is STILL prime time Saturday night entertainment. Is this the England that Orwell wrote as "having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same"? Maybe, but why the hell does it have to be Brucie that survives Winters of Discontent, Thatcherism, and New Labour. Anyway, who would have guessed that Orwell was such a prophetic media commentator? Probably fewer than those who would have had Brucie down as an observer of the English condition? Listen and "enjoy" as Brucie communicates a love of country rarely articulated by centuries of poets.