Happy 4th of July

This isn’t going to be a Fourth of July post that uses the occasion to attack America. Truth is, I love America. Admittedly I’ve only been there three times, which is enough to decide I like the place but not to have developed any long standing issues with it, like not being able to find a public toilet or free healthcare. And I’m not sure that New York and San Francisco are representative of the country as a whole.

But wait – is anywhere representative of the whole of America? Hawaii and Alaska seem poles apart, as are Hollywood and small town Oklahoma. It always seems slightly strange to me that the country is so polarised between two political parties, as you’d think the sheer size and diversity of the place and its population would have lead to thousands of smaller parties all fighting for radically different constituencies.

From the outside, that could well be a strange sort of strength – a national unity of sorts. Sure, I’m pretty certain that the place is rent with divisions, but there still seems to be a unifying principle behind it all. Certainly American patriotism is worn on the sleeve more than it ever is in Britain, where it’s only really brought to mind by wars, football and annoying newspapers. Sometimes the way American national pride is expressed is flat out offensive (I’m from Britain, for goodness sake, we’re a democracy too and we don’t hate freedom!), but often it’s touching, even inspiring.

But then America is an easy place to be inspired by. If you’re from the US, take a moment to consider that many of you live amid a landscape that can only be described as epic. All those deserts and mountains and beaches and vast cornfields… It’s no wonder Hollywood took off, what with all those locations in which to film.

But most of those landscapes exist within the imagination. Texas belongs to John Wayne movies, California to the Beach Boys. Maine is Stephen King’s, the South is Harper Lee’s, and New Jersey is Springsteen’s. Music and movies have created an imaginative landscape that, to outsiders perhaps, is more America than America. It’s a landscape that’s big enough to hold a lot a narratives.

And not all of those narratives are fiction – the space race, for instance, and the Civil Rights campaign. Say what you want about American politicans – I do – but it’s hard not to have respect for the likes of Neil Armstrong and Martin Luther King, people whose stories contain both the good and the bad of America.

So on the Fourth of July, America gets to celebrate its independence, and thinks a lot about freedom (and, hopefully, the responsibilities of that freedom). And I hope it’s a good day; I’m happy to be British and wouldn’t trade the BBC or NHS for anything, but I’m glad America is around. Because I also wouldn’t want to live in a world without rock and roll and footprints on the moon.

San Francisco Memories

Photograph sourced from http://pdphoto.org/index.php

On this day in 1847, Yerba Buena in California adopted its more famous name, which is as good a reason as any to post some of my memories of when I visited it back in 2004.

 

It hasn’t been that long since I was in San Francisco, not in the grand scheme of things, but some of the memories are getting a bit hazy. Alcatraz is a pretty cool place to visit; it’s now a National Park, and so amid the tours covering the history and law and order aspects of the place, we had one tour guide enthusiastically telling us about a colony of oysters that was developing off one of the piers. That’s one of the reasons I have such respect for tour guides – the US National Parks Service is one of the reasons for that. The Park Ranger at Alcatraz genuinely loved his job, bubbling over with enthusiasm and geeky joy in his subject. That’s actually the thing that most stands out from that particular tour; well, that and getting pooped on by a seagull.

(Reading that back, it sounds a little dismissive of the place and I don’t want that to be the case. It’s well worth visiting if you’re ever in San Francisco, even if Mythbusters may have proven it to be less escape-proof than everyone thought…)

My most recounted memory of SF came at the end of the holiday. We got a cab to the airport and, frankly, the driver was insane. He looked how you’d expect a cabbie in San Francisco to look – long grey hair, vaguely hippy-ish – and he drove maniacally, swerving around a three or four lane freeway as if all other cars were merely conceptual entities and thus couldn’t kill us if we drove into the side/back/front/roof of them. He operated a clever system of indicating the opposite direction to that he intended to move, and when other drivers hit their horns and, you know, swore at us, he just blinked his hazard warning lights with Zen-like calm. It would have been beautiful in its Darwinian elegance if it weren’t for the fact I was in the passenger seat and therefore had a close-up view of everything we were about to hit.

(Minor thought on memory – I remember sitting on the left hand side of the car, but that can’t be right, because it was American and so the passenger seat would have been on the right, surely?)

He also told us that, although he was married, his wife was a hippo and therefore he had a mistress. I don’t think his wife was really a hippo, I just think she nagged him a lot to reconsider his vocation, what with the whole driving thing being a bit of a kamikaze mission…

One night we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, eating over-sized portions, listening to live music and impressing a cute waitress by polishing off a dessert the size of a whale. I think that’s when I consolidated my little tradition of going to Hard Rock Cafes in every country I visit.

(I guess I should apologise for being a bit corporate there, especially when I didn’t find anything relating to Joshua Norton and I didn’t visit the City Lights bookstore.)

Then there was Haight-Ashbury, the legendary hippy district, which still kinda looks the part, although there’s a GAP there which sort of spoils the image. We went there on the bus; in front of us a teenage girl was crying and an aging hippy couple were trying to comfort her. “Write all your memories in a book,” the guy said, “Then when you turn the page it puts those memories in the past and they don’t hurt so bad.” I remember being a bit cynical about that; now I look back and admire the guy for giving a damn about a crying girl on a bus.

Also in the Haight we went to the Ben and Jerry’s store, where the spaced out twentysomething dude behind the counter told us how The Da Vinci Code had blown his mind.

But all this aside, one moment stands out, embedded in my bones. 2004 was a bad year for me; something bad was coming, I knew it was coming, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It was a good holiday in a bad year and so that’s the context for all this.

Our last night in SF, we went down to Pier 39. It’s a popular tourist spot, all carousels and smelly sealions, and we’d travelled there a couple of times on the famous trolley buses. It’s a nice spot and on that last night I found myself on my own at the end of the pier. Behind me were the sounds of shops and sideshows; before me was San Francisco Bay, dark, waves lapping, the lights of boats slowly drifting, the Alcatraz lighthouse blinking on and off and on and off… And time slowed to a crawl and I was at peace and didn’t want to leave and I just stared out at the Bay with a sense of transcendence and a presence and a peace that I believe to have been God but I wasn’t in much of a state to do much with that knowledge at the time.

“There he is,” said my friend Andy, “You alright, Mr. Hyde?”

“Yeah. Just taking a moment. Just taking a moment.”

 

Things For Which I’m Grateful To America

In many ways I’m just like every other non-American, looking across the Atlantic at pizza being classified as a vegetable and pepper spray as a food stuff and thinking “What the heck?” I’m British, I can’t help it, it’s in our collective DNA.

However, I’m not going to pretend I don’t also love America. So today, to celebrate Thanksgiving, here are a few things for which I’m grateful to the U.S. of A…

Star Wars

The original trilogy, of course. The series for which the term ‘blockbuster’ was invented, a part of my heart will always live in a galaxy far, far away.

Bruce Springsteen

Specifically Thunder Road, but I talk about that more here…

Superhero Comics

I love superheroes – the stories, the characters, the iconography, the concept. If you want specifics… All Star Superman #10. James Robinson’s run on Starman. Grant Morrison’s Justice League. Gail Simone. Justice League Unlimited, especially Guy Gardner losing a fight to a mouse. And the story my friend Sudge and I came up with that started with Booster Gold getting beaten up by the Hulk.

To Kill A Mockingbird

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

The Moon Landing

Something else I’ve written about before, but the moon landing is the one event I wish I’d been around for. The excitement, ambition and heroism of the Apollo programme is still something that resonates with me long after we stopped walking on the lunar surface – I hope that one day I’ll get to see men and women heading there for myself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Questions About The Death Penalty

Is the death penalty wrong?

If it’s wrong, does that mean God was wrong when He commanded it in the Old Testament?

Or is the death penalty right?

And was Jesus therefore wrong when he said “Turn the other cheek”?

Or is it wrong on a personal, vengeful level and right on a legal, law-enforcing level?

Should the state even base laws on religion?

Should religions be selling-out their beliefs by getting caught up in the fundamentally compromised world of politics?

Is it right to accept that, in a country with the death penalty, innocent people will mistakenly be executed?

Is is right to accept that, in a country without the death penalty, guilty-as-hell serial killers and rapists may go free and strike again?

At what point does someone become responsible for their own actions?

And if someone’s not altogether responsible for their own actions, through mental illness for example, should they ever be executed?

Even if they’ve done something truly abhorrant?

If you’re pro-life, are you therefore anti-death penalty?

If not, why not? Innocents are still dying.

If you’re pro-life, are you therefore anti-war?

If not, why not? Innocents are still dying, many of them babies.

Is it a numbers game? Acceptable losses, collateral damage?

What ratio of innocent victim to legitimate target are you therefore willing to accept?

If you’re pro-choice, are you therefore pro-war and pro-death penalty?

If not, is it therefore because it’s unacceptable to kill a human but not a fetus?

When does a fetus become a human?

When does life begin?

Is there a soul?

When does the soul become joined to the human body?

If there isn’t a soul, how do you know?

What about the times scientists have been wrong?

If there is a soul, how do you know?

What about the times priests have been wrong?

Don’t women have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies?

Don’t children have the right to be born?

Is abortion always wrong?

Even when birth would threaten the mother?

Even if the child would have no quality of life?

Even if the mother was raped?

Assuming you had the means, would you adopt a child if it meant preventing an abortion?

How many innocent people have to be executed before it’s accepted that the death penalty is seriously flawed?

How many guilty people have to reoffend, and how much more has to be spent on prisons and law enforcement, before it’s accepted that a more extreme deterrant is called for?

Does it matter if the death penalty disproportionately affects the poor and ethnic minorities?

What do you think about the poor and ethnic minorities in general?

Would you press the button to execute someone?

Would you let someone else?

Why?

Would you press the button to execute someone if there was reasonable doubt?

Would you let someone else?

Why?

Would you watch?

Why? Why not?

What’s worthy of execution? What isn’t? Where do you draw the line?

Would you vote for someone you disagreed with over the death penalty?

The death penalty provojes a thousand and one questions, weaving around other contentious issues, becoming a shibboleth for where you stand politically. The subject will be debated and insults will be thrown and politicians will make capital from it for years to come.

None of which helps Troy Davis, or his family, as of 11:08pm, Eastern Time, on September 21st 2011.

It was Peace Day.

The 9-11 Decade: Who gets to define the next ten years?

I don’t have anything new to offer with regard to September 11th; no insight that hasn’t already been made over the last ten years, no epiphany to give meaning to the whole situation. I wasn’t directly affected by it – I’m not American, I didn’t witness it with my own two eyes – and I guess I’m not really qualified to comment.

And yet, in another sense, I’m a child of 9-11; we all are, ever since the 21st century started on that autumn day ten years ago. We’ve all been shaped by it, whether we acknowledge that or not, and now we’re a decade down the road, a decade into a storyline that few of us would claim to understand. Maybe trying to comprehend things in those terms is a mistake – the politics that defined the aftermath soon became a nightmare, let’s not let them overshadow what happened before.

“Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin’ the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin’ down here.”

What did happen? Initial reports were jumbled and confused – I remember hearing that something was happening in America, either Washington DC or New York, but I was at work and the internet had suddenly slowed to a crawl. We heard rumours and half-truths of calamities – people were agreed that something had happened to the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but stories began to circulate about the White House and the Empire State Building. In spite of this, the truth began to coalesce and images emerged – the now iconic pictures of the WTC burning, the collapse of the towers, shellshocked survivors running down empty streets covered in dust, firefighters heading in the opposite direction to everyone else.

“I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher,
Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire.”

It was the firefighters of New York City who became the heroes of 9-11. The political aftermath has a legacy of ambiguity and moral difficulties, but no-one’s about to argue with the the praise directed at those who run towards the fire to save others. The heroism of so many carried with it a terrible cost, one that’s difficult to even imagine in peacetime. I remember an awards ceremony being televised here in Britain, a commemoration of men, woman and children who had served their communities or overcome terrible odds. Alongside a host of celebrities presenting these awards were two NY firemen, who walked onto the stage to immediately receive a standing ovation. And I remember the tears streaming down my face, because no matter what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantanmo Bay, nothing could take away the heroism and the sacrifice of the emergency services at the World Trade Centre. That should be 9-11’s legacy – it isn’t, and it won’t be, but it should.

“Without your sweet kiss
my soul is lost, my friend
Now tell me how do I begin again?”

But ten years is a long time to be defined by anything. Some people are calling the years since 9-11 a lost decade, and you can see where they’re coming from. Those planes slamming into those towers feel like an interuption to history, like we were heading one way, then we all got diverted by something so utterly unexpected that it left the world in a state of shock that it’s still trying to overcome. After all, America wasn’t attacked by the military might of a rival nation, but a terrorist cell using hijacked planes and wire cutters. There’s something enormous about that, that the 21st century could be redefined by, what, nineteen hijackers plus Osama bin Laden as their organisation’s figurehead? Let that sink in – twenty people, and most of us would be hardpressed to name the majority of them.

And now that’s occured to me, I don’t want to live in a world defined by people like that. That sounds petulant, reading it back, but it’s not, it’s really just common sense. I don’t want to live in a world created by anonymous terrorists; who would?

I want to live in a world where we commemorate the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, who brought down the plane before it could reach another target.

I want to live in a world where we remember the names of those who died helping others.

I want to live in a world where someone like bin Laden becomes a historical footnote, but we tell the story about how Rick Rescorla made sure over 2,000 employees of Morgan Stanley were safely evacuated from the World Trade Centre.

I want to live in a world where we learn from those who spent countless hours working at Ground Zero to either rescue survivors or grant some dignity to those who died.

And I want to live in a world where we’d rather rise up than drag ourselves down.

God bless America. I ❤ NY.

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