Ok! Here's the Pictures!

Late, I know, but I've been through too many time zones in too short a time to be held to deadlines.

Minimal commentary today, I'll let the pictures do the talking:

First is my favorite, my American family meeting my English Family (save for M'Lord Lurker who was have in Spain having a fabulous time). This would be the Natural History Museum in London providing the architectural backdrop.

Please note, the child is almost as tall as the midget student! :)








This handsome fellow is a Tower of London Raven. The little one took a special interest in the Tower Ravens, having read the story of the Ravens having special import to the continuation of England as a country. (The story goes that so long as there are ravens at the Tower there shall always be an England and if the ravens ever leave then England shall fall.) Of course, I like this one because it reminds me of my hairy/feathery friend from the Midwest. Either way, we are happy to report that the Tower Ravens are alive, healthy, and seem to have no interest in looking for a new home!


Okay, after a week of playing with this thing, this is the last photo -- the little one at Regent's Park.

Sorry, kids but the interface between the digi-camera software and Blogger is giving me fits. Obviously, this blogging thing will take some getting used to.

A temporary change of direction

Next week I'll be across the pond visiting friends, sharing London with the little one for the first time, and generally on vacation. It seems an odd time to be setting out on such a wonderful adventure given the events of the past week, but on the "home front" I promised the little one two years ago that she could make this trip with me, and I believe in my heart that we will be safe. So for the next week my contributions to this space will be a haven and refuge from the events of the outside world.

Meanwhile, to quickly address events in the Middle East, which are complex and far-reaching to be sure. Two unrelated thoughts have come to mind over the past couple of days that I really haven't seen discussed elsewhere. But one I think is truly important, the other is more "gut reaction" than anything else, but both, I think, will play a role in events as they unfold.

First, given the climate of fear and isolationism that has been cultivated in the US since 9/11, I am deeply worried that the actions of the Israeli government will produce a leap in Anti-Semitism here in the States. As willing as we have been to surrender our freedoms to allow the government to "keep us safe," I, sadly, would not be surprised to find that Americans start blaming Israel for our difficulties in the Middle East and, by extension, anyone who is Jewish. Israel is our ally, hopefully an ally we can reason with, an ally that will see the greater good in backing away from a crisis that is terrifying close to escalating into the kind of war many of us hoped to leave behind in the last century. But, however Israel responds it will be a decision of the Israeli government -- nothing Jews in America, Europe, or elsewhere in the world can control, anymore that Mother has the ability to control US policy. Just as all Muslims are not terrorists, all Jews are not militants. Let us judge people by the "content of their character," which is a good segue to my other thought.

This thought has been dwelling in my head for some time based on the US public's reaction or lack thereof to our continued presence in Iraq. Two-thirds of the American public now oppose the War in Iraq. A recent poll indicated that, by a three-to-one margin, voters are dissatisfied enough with our leadership to want to vote them out of power. That's a large group of unhappy people. Except....where the hell are they? Where are the protests? Where are the marches? Are we so afraid of our own government now that we worry about publicly denouncing its policies? Or is it something else?

The Iraq War invariably draws comparisons to Vietnam War, more so now than ever. There are, of course, many differences, but I want to focus on one: There is no draft. Could it possibly be that our '60s protesters, many now turning 60 themselves, were motivated more by self-preservation than ideology? Remember these are the same people that grew up to be the "Yuppie Scum" of the '80s, and are now...well, President Bush just celebrated his 60th birthday himself...that's right, they are now the people in power. A generation that has always been in love with itself, was always convinced of its own superiority, is now holding all the power. The generation that protested against the Vietnam War is running the Iraq War. Oh the irony! But there's no chance that it's their asses that are going to get shot this time, and there's no draft to call their sons and daughters away from their safe suburban lives, so they can go on watching "American Idol" and contain their outrage to the ballot box, maybe, if they remember to vote.

So, today's post is a little jumbled, a little mix of this and that, but tomorrow I'm catching a plane to that wonderful place from which I draw so much inspiration. Perhaps being part of the magnificent living, breath, pulsing organism that is London will recharge my ability to create a cohesive post.

Until we meet again, Peace to you all.

Stargazing from the gutter

The other night, the child and I watched a documentary on Cassini -- the unmanned spacecraft, not the designer – a joint project of the US and European space agencies, sent to study Saturn and Titan, one of the planet’s moons. Two years ago, we saw the first pictures coming back, awe-inspiring stuff that could give even the most hard-boiled among us a “gee whiz” moment. A project of nearly 20 years in the planning and execution, requiring international cooperation, applying the best minds to the multitude of complex problems involved in sending a man-made craft billions of miles from earth, Cassini is a triumph of human cooperation, imagination, and inspiration.

To see what Cassini is up to now:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

Meanwhile, back home on planet Earth…

We struggle along, seemingly unable to break out of the hamster wheel of limited thinking. Across nations, there are those who believe we – all the people of this planet – need a new direction, whether it is to bring basic human rights to all people, resolving the growing conflicts between developed nations and developing nations, or ensuring the survival of our planet for future generations. And some people are just plain tired of business as usual, the same rhetoric, the same stalemates, the same poses and postures from the political left and the political right. There are speeches, there are hearings, there are blue ribbon panels and political debate, but in the end we are no further along than when we started. And that isn’t just in America, or in the West, it is a stagnation that seems to have settled over many parts of the globe. In the midst of this, I hear people say, “We need a leader, we need a Kennedy, a Martin Luther King, a Nelson Mandela.” They sit on the sidelines, their frustration turning to apathy, and they wait for The Great Man who will lead us into a new era.

Here’s the kicker…The Great Man is a lie, or at least a greatly exaggerate myth. These men emerged as leaders from movements with very common beginnings. The movements were already there, built upon foundations laid by ordinary people who had the extraordinary courage to say “enough.” These people gathered together, knew what they wanted to accomplish, and with nothing but each other began the work of changing the world, their world, our world.

Think about those nameless, faceless people for a moment and what they had to the courage to envision – civil rights for black Americans, an end to apartheid in South Africa. How many times were they called crazy, told their vision was impossible, told the problem was too big and too complex, or that people would never change? Yet they kept going and from their numbers came the people who were able to carry their vision to the larger world.

The scientists behind Cassini faced countless technological challenges on their way to fulfilling their goal. They had to do things that had never been done, anticipate as many variables as they could, even when dealing with overwhelming unknowns. But their sense of mission and their passion for what they were and are doing compelled them forward, and the results have been a magnificent glimpse into our universe.

Are you looking over your shoulder for a savior? Like Bonnie Tyler, are you “holding out for a hero”? If so, you may as well fold up the tent now. Or you can stop waiting, get off the sidelines, and start charting your own course, embracing your own mission.*




*Need a starting place? Try this: http://www.one.org/

One More Take on July 7th

To be honest, had I not been asked to make some kind of personal statement about July 7th I would not have thought twice about it. The date has no personal connection with me. I could not tell you the “real” name of any one person who lives in England. The seventh of July means the same to me as the seventh of any month.

I read about it on the interweb. After the initial thoughts of sadness for all of humanity I was struck with the feeling of solidarity. A terrorist attack that was not directed at America. We are not alone. Nobody is safe, and yet, what can anybody do?

A radical extremist who decides to make a statement through suicide bombing is not a person who can ever be reasoned with, or affected by political/religious tolerance. Should the whole world have to change to pacify the especially violent and especially radical minority?

What could England have done in hindsight to change the course of events that lead up to the tube bombing? What could America have done to “prevent” 9/11? Probably nothing. The people that become terrorists are not, by definition, people who can be reasoned with, changed, or tolerated on the same level that 99% of the rest of the worlds population can be.

What can the average person do? I have no idea. The best thing I can think of is to teach communication, toleration, and acceptance. Accept that people are different. Accept that political views are different. Accept differences in religion.

Accept the very idea that what makes us all different is what makes us all special. Do not fear the differences, embrace the differences.

A dreamer's take on terror

I moved out of my parents’ house in the end of August 2001. This was when I slowly started watching the news on TV. I remember exactly what I was doing and where I was on September 11th 2001 when America was attacked. This was the first big thing I really followed on the news. After that terror has been in the news almost every day. And every day I care less. This is part of the world I live in. This was what concerned the world when I started watching the news and it almost seems normal to me.

When Mother wanted people to write about where they were on July 7th last year and something like that, I had to ask myself what happened then. London Bombings, 56 people dead and 700 injured. I can’t remember what I was doing, where I was and I doubt it has affected me. I’ve stopped seeing it as something to remember. This is the world we live in.

The thing I think we need to see is who did the attack one year ago. They were not raised in a country where religion was dominating. Three of them were born in England one in Jamaica. People raised in our society who have managed to find so much hate against it that they blew themselves up killing 56 people. If we didn’t see it before it should be clear to us now. Attacking other countries is not the way to deal with this problem.
When the US was attacked they had to respond. The world’s only superpower can not let such an action go unpunished. Most of the world was behind the US, when a French newspaper writes “We are all Americans” you know there is support and sympathy. How the US managed to throw that support away so fast and so completely is beyond my ability to understand. It takes skill.

The US responded by launching the war on terror, introducing the patriot act and invading different countries. None of which seems to have made the world any safer. What could England do? Their terrorist had lived there all their lives. What should they do? Invade their own country? What happened in England tells us this is a problem that can’t be solved with violence and it doesn’t help simply guarding yourself against it by stripping people of their liberties. What we need is understanding. Knowing your enemy so to speak. Labelling terrorists as evil or animals, isn’t going to help either. We need to see them as humans, humans who believe they are doing the right thing. We need to understand them and change it. We need to understand the society they come. And we need to do so without using any of the tools we condemn them for using. We also need to realise that we don’t always know what’s good for the world. We need to learn from them as well.

Instead of spending so much money on wars to insure peace, we might try using the money on more peaceful measures. Food and clean water in the countries without. Fighting poverty. Making sure that people around the world are given a chance to live lives worth living.

What we need to do is to realise that we are part of the problem and really look at ourselves.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Silence.

Remembering 7/7

Today, TCK the Blog reflects upon the events that unfolded in London one year ago

today. We invite you to join with us by posting your comments, your thoughts,

and your memories.

7 July, 2005

The Day
I woke up that morning, got some coffee, fired up the computer, stepped out to the patio for my morning cigarette, came back inside and sat down to see what the world had been doing while I was asleep and answer the morning mail. The headline leaped out of the screen and clutched at my chest with the force of a shotgun blast – Terrorists Bomb London Subway, Buses. Every other thought (including the sensible one to actually check my e-mail) left me. London had been bombed, the place that is My London in the way Los Angeles will never be My Los Angeles even though I’ve lived here my whole life. Then, a quiet, timorous voice in my head said one word…Billy (of course I was thinking in real names, but screen names have been substituted to protect the privacy of these individuals).

Billy’s in London. Where were the explosions?

Suddenly, the kinda vague-on-the-details reporting of AOL News was grossly insufficient.

Where, dammit!?!

I’m furiously pointing and clicking, the mouse controlled by shaking hands (reminder here, I should have checked e-mail first), over to the BBC, which understands London is no more a single coherent city than New York is, but a collection of neighborhoods, each different from the others…

…and there! At last! A map! Notting Hill, the home environs of one Billy Oblivion, appears to be out of harm’s way, but so many places are not. There’s King’s Cross. There’s Edgeware Road. Oh no! Liverpool Street…no! If KateCat or ChasCat were coming into London…I couldn’t finish that thought. I could barely breathe. The computer monitor blurred as tears welled in my eyes.

Finally, I did check my in-box. Of course, there was word from Billy, “Don’t go into a panic, I’m fine.” Oops. And so I spent the next day and half, sending and receiving messages consisting of “are you and yours ok?” “We’re fine, but we are still looking for Aunt Sally or Uncle Bob” and on it went. So many people were lucky that day, but many were not. Fifty-two innocent people died, 700 were injured, some in the most horrible ways imaginable. Those who escaped uninjured report they are still haunted by what they saw.

The Aftermath
It took me awhile to think about those people, especially the 52 who died, so great was my relief that no one I knew had been harmed. However, they were 52 individuals who deserve to be remembered. The BBC has a page on its website at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/victims/default.stm

that tells you a little something about each individual. I’m struck by their diversity -- different ages, races, backgrounds – all these different people were enemies, according to those to set off the bombs? This thought is made even scarier given that in the last year it has been established that the attackers were not “foreigners,” but instead “homegrown,” as much akin to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as Osama bin Laden.

I’ve read the profiles of most of these people in the past year, and I’d like to talk about one in particular. Colin Morley was killed at Edgeware Road. I know this place. I’ve stopped at Edgeware Road on the way to Billy’s flat and on other adventures. I never met Mr. Morley, but like the 51 other people, Mr. Morley did not deserve to die that day. I’m not singling him out because he is more deserving of remembrance than anyone else, but because had I never read about Colin Morley I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading this. It was his story that resonated with me, his story that has stayed in my mind for the past year.

He used his brilliant communication skills to try to help charities and businesses understand their brand and, on a wider scale, he tried to change the world of media and marketing into a force for social good.
His latest project, called Be The Change, encourages people and organisations to find ways to improve ethically, socially, environmentally and personally. (From the BBC website)

Our Purpose:
To get the right people talking about the right issues
To cross fertilise ideas and experience
To change the way we think about issues that are not being solved at the current level of thinking
To explore the means of achieving effective systems change
To inspire us all to make it happen (From the Be The Change website at: http://www.bethechange.org.uk/)

The world needs more Colin Morleys. It could ill afford to lose this one -- anymore than it could afford the loss of the other people who died 7/7. He believed in making a difference. He believed in change, based on a wide variety of individuals working together. He shared that belief with others. Now, I share it with you today. I hope you share it with others.

Looking Back
In reflecting on events that day and immediately after, what I remember is the enduring strength and character of so many of our British friends. From Billy staying on at his office to answer phones so that everyone else could go home to the countless stories of people helping each other throughout that day -- whether it was rescuing the injured or sharing a taxi, Londoners did what they could. And they were not broken. These people who survived The Blitz and who survived IRA attacks, showed fierce determination and indomitable spirit by quietly going right on with their lives.

A year on now, through the filter of distance, I can look back on that day and see one unexpected way the world very quietly changed, and I think it’s worth mentioning. Through technology, people were striving to communicate to the world. Images came through, not the cameras of CNN, but from mobile phones. Information was being shared P-2-P -- on blogs, forums, and messageboards. Journalists couldn’t keep up with the speed of the internet. The news cycle became instantaneous, and regular people were controlling the content. It wasn’t objective nor was it detached. It was personal, meaningful, immediate, and direct. It was a sign of things to come.

Looking Ahead
A week after 7/7, the government encouraged a moment of silence as tribute to those who died, and today they are also asking for a moment of silence. I say, with all due respect to those who lost their lives and those who lost their loved ones, to hell with that. Silence is for the fearful. Silence is for the hopeless. Silence is the sound despair makes. Raise your voice today. Say loudly and firmly that the world is united against terror. Shout so it can be heard across oceans and continents that we remember and we are not afraid.

Coming Soon

Sadly, this month begins a series of sad anniversaries....7/7, Katrina, and 9/11. Where were you that day? What were you doing? How did it affect you? What are your feelings one year later? This Friday, I'll be putting together a 7/7 post, and you can add your contributions by "Commenting."

This is for everyone -- Londoners, Brits, Yanks, Canadians, Czechs, Danes -- everyone.

The main reason for creating this blog was to bring global viewpoints together -- to create an international roundtable, so to speak. This will be our first real experiment in that direction.

Please consider contributing, and feel free to link, e-mail, spam or otherwise share this experiment with others.

Thanks.

You Say You Want a Revolution...

Tomorrow, the United States celebrates high treason. Yea for those traitors to King and Country! Yea for the slave-owning rich white male power structure! Yea for solving political differences with war instead of diplomacy!

Ok, I got that off my chest, now to move onward…

Two hundred and few years ago, a bunch of radicals got together and decided they wanted a revolution (cue “Revolution #9”). To make their point, they signed a document that, given that there was no e-mail, no fax machine, no text messaging, wouldn’t reach Britain for weeks. Why we don’t celebrate Independence Day on the day King George actually received the declaration (August 10th), I don’t know – I guess that’s a tree falling in the forest question. But it’s July 4th (which is actually about a week after the very first declaration was signed, but I guess they found some typos, then they needed to make copies and there was no Kinko’s back then, ok, I’ll stop) and we’ll just pretend everyone in Britain knew that treachery was in our hearts and minds the moment John Hancock put pen to parchment. That document was an interesting little ditty. It begins like this:

When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

Isn’t that cool? It says people have a natural right to separate themselves from politic associations that no longer fit. It says this is a thing that sometimes happens and sometimes needs to happen. Take, for instance, the two-party, privately financed, election system we have in the United States. It says we have a natural right to separate from it.
A little farther down, it says this:

But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

This is the bit I really like, “it is their duty…to provide new Guards for their future Security.” Duty. Not choice, not decision. If the government is no longer serving the interests of the governed, there is a duty to create change. This isn’t me saying it, this is Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, and 50 or so other guys you never really hear about, but whose necks would have stretched just as far had they lost. And do you realize what they aren’t saying? They aren’t saying “stay the course.” They don’t call change “cut and run.” [Sidenote – isn’t interesting how much more eloquent our leaders used to be?]

Okay, just one more tidbit before I leave everybody to their barbecue and beer. After the war, a lot of the same guys who perpetrated the treason, got back together and wrote some more stuff down. This they called The Constitution, and before the ink was even dry, they decided it needed a little extra “oomph.” Well, really there was a great deal of arguing from the new states about how much power they should really allow the new federal government, so for the next few years after they wrote the Constitution, they worked out the language on the real sticking points, and these became the Bill of Rights. Here’s No. 1 on the Bill of Rights Hit Parade:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

People have the right to disagree with the government! What were they thinking? Well, they were thinking how a federal government that exerted too much authority would become tyrannical and we would end up with another King George, another long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, and…Wow! These guys would have made a fortune in the 1-900 psychic phone line business!

So, to those would think Mother hates America and is very unpatriotic for disagreeing with American policies, I say have a safe and happy Fourth, but think about two things:

1) The two documents that best illustrate the ideals of this country say dissent is very patriotic.

2) I’ve actually taken the time to read them.


Special note to Moto: Try not to blow yourself up.