“All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear.”

— Ann Patchett, “Bel Canto”

Washed Up

The drying of laundry “highlights a fundamental cultural [difference] between the US and UK that I’d characterize, broadly, as a British inclination to accept things as they are, versus an American inclination to alter and change them.

“ . . . In the face of illness, loss, or heartbreak, the American insistence on looking on the bright side and fixing the problem can feel heartlessly clueless. Some things cannot be fixed.

“But some things absolutely can.”

— Corinne Purtill, Quartz, 21 July 2017

(For the record, we don't have a combination washer-dryer and have heard enough criticism to never buy one.)

Buddhism 102

There were two metaphors that stuck with me after this week’s class. 

First, when discussing the concept of enlightenment, the instructor advised, “Don’t focus on the finger. Focus on what the finger is pointing toward.”

Secondly, there was a discussion of Buddhism as a religion, and the things that separate it from other religions. (Those things are part of what has drawn me to study Buddhism.) One of my fellow students — clearly not as much a novice as me — suggested that, because Buddhism doesn’t have a creator a la Christianity or Islam, it’s less concerned with questions of how we got here. He related what may be a common story in the teaching of Buddhism: “It’s like getting shot in the arm with an arrow. You think less about who shot the arrow and more about getting it out of your arm and healing your arm.”     

Buddhism 101

I’ve started an introductory course at the London Buddhist Centre; last night’s was the first of six meetings. I’ve been interested in Buddhism for a while, and became more serious about studying it after reading a book while on vacation last year. Its values — rationality, compassion, peace — appeal.

At one point last night, the instructor was asked, “How do you know you’re making progress?” She explained that, first of all, it’s generally frowned upon among practitioners of Buddhism to discuss the spiritual advances one makes. But if she had to articulate it — which she seemed at pains to do — she said that progress meant having a better understanding of what one doesn’t understand.

Daring to Be Dull

“Straight as an arrow, exasperatingly thorough, extremely earnest, smart, plain, pragmatic, wonkish. He was a stickler, a self-described curmudgeon.”

David Butler, an editor for Stars and Stripes, was beaten to death almost 17 years ago in Arlington, Va., on his way home after a night shift.

I was in D.C. at the time, and although I never met him, this remembrance has stuck with me, partly because of the horrific nature of the crime, which appears to remain unsolved. But in him I also saw — perhaps with some self-flattery and a touch of embarrassment — myself.

His work mirrored my own, hanging around “in case you have to tear up the front page for a nuclear explosion or the death of a princess.”

(Like him, I was in the newsroom on my 30th birthday, which was an election night. Like him, I was surrounded by pizza boxes. Unlike him, I was not in the company of a stripper.)

I was also well familiar with “those strange small hours, our 5 p.m., our quitting time, the world’s middle of the night” and could easily envision the circumstances in which he was killed.

I’ve recently been thinking about David because he sounded like most of the journalists I’ve worked with over a 22-year career in newspapers: dedicated, careful but human, and honestly trying to provide a fair and accurate account of the facts in an often messy world.

“He was, in short, everything you want in the guy who edits your newspaper.”

Cuba 2016

Carrie and I awoke on the morning of Saturday, 26 November, to the news that Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader of nearly 60 years, had died at the age of 90. Later that day, we flew to Havana for a pre-planned vacation.

A drive along the Malecón. Featuring a 1955 Buick Century, the back of the Hotel Nacional and Carrie's invaluable Spanish, this is the start of a tour of Havana by one of the city's ubiquitous classic American cars. One of the first lessons of Cuba: Establish the price in advance.
We arrived in Cuba at the beginning of a nine-day national mourning period for Fidel. The practical effect: There was no music -- even taxi drivers turned down their normally blaring radios -- and little alcohol -- only hotels were allowed to serve . . . legally.

“The British like to see their military history as a succession of scrapes — the Armada or the Battle of Britain, for example — in which they are outnumbered and outgunned and survive by guts and ingenuity. It seems to demonstrate a higher moral purpose. But much of the story of their empire is testament not to moral but to technological superiority. . . . As Hilaire Belloc put it in The Modern Traveller, published that year:

Whatever happens, we have got // The Maxim Gun, and they have not.”

— Jeremy Paxman, Empire

“The financial needs of news companies mean that they cannot afford to advance ideas which wouldn’t very quickly be able to find favour with enormous numbers of people. An artist can make a decent living selling work to fifty clients; an author can get by with 50,000 readers, but a news organization cannot pay its bills without a following larger than the population of a good-sized metropolis. What levels of agreement, what suppression of idiosyncrasy and useful weirdness, will be required to render material sufficiently palatable to so many  . . . Wisdom, intelligence and subtlety of opinion tend not to be sprinkled through the population in handy blocks of 20 million people.”

— Alain de Botton, The News: A User’s Manual

 

‘The Draw of the New City-States’

“London and New York, with roughly the same populations, have become booming city-states that reflect 21st-century openness and fluidity, but also the skewed economics and growing inequalities of a world where finance has outflanked the law and the global rich find ways to game a system that holds the majority in its grip.

“In London during these boom times, the disparities can feel obscene. Still, London does the public sphere, like bike schemes, road surfaces and the subway, much better than New York. It is a European city, after all. But it sits in a middling nation well past its zenith. New York does power, directness and steak a lot better than London. It races and churns. London carries on.”

— Roger Cohen, The New York Times, 15 Aug. 2014