three big authors saying similar things about social scalability, most likely in isolation from one another

1. Osamu Dazai - No Longer Human (1948) - something about where is the line between the individual and society?

2. Anna Tsing - Mushroom at the End of the World (2015) - something about the difficulty of scaling between the small local to global ecological-economic phenomena

3. Tim Morton - All Art is Ecological (2021) - something about how many individual(s) create climate change?

(will fill in specifics later)

do you remember the eclipse?

do you remember the eclipse? I didn't have the glasses and I was in Morning Heights, Manhattan, with an old half-frame camera, so I took pictures through a different lens, which I found more exciting than the eclipse! today I received the scans of those photos. #olympusPenF

"global nomad" visas are not a good solution to today's economic crises and tiktok fantasies

With the increase of "global nomad" visas (Japan, Spain, Portugal) we are going to see more and more middle-upper class and upper-class adults, a high percentage of foreigners, evicting locals (and their businesses, their deep-rooted social lives, etc.) from the centers of city's. Not all cities, but those that are safe (not US), have nice public transportation, cultural activities, and decent weather.

As this occurs, we will see corporations trying to recreate and sell cultural atmospheres of how life "used to be," locally, before this expulsion. By cultural atmospheres, I'm referring to cultural consumer products that people sell and that recreate some local historical or traditional aspects, for example, films, posters, hotel interior designs, etc. These local cultural fabrications of the past, of course, are acritical and say nothing of how we got from point A (past) to point B (present). In other words, info about the mistakes and the humans that made the poor decisions, are nowhere to be found. So we don't learn and this expulsion, economic polarization between rich and poor, increases. 

Then a socio-economic divide will grow thicker between locals and non-locals. The local economy will split between (for instance, in Spanish cities: el precio normal vs. el precio turista). 

Are you saying that an innocent nomad visa is related to a global split between rich and poor?!

Yes!

So you also benefit from this wrongdoing.

Yes...

(A long time ago, I wrote about this in the article, "La Barcelona nostálgica." Maybe I should update it...)

What's hard about being a cultural spectator is that it makes you fall in love with humanity, makes you feel big feelings and makes you dream of big things. And reality is the opposite. So you have to mediate these two. 

Toronto

I was in Toronto for 5 days last week and it was a time of lots of learning, so I wanted to write something for my imaginary audience quickly before I forget. I was attending my 1st AAA (Anthropology) conference and it was really eye-opening and inspiring. There were hundreds of innovative panels on hundreds of unconventional topics, every facet of everyday life was being scrutinized through a critical social lens, from coffeeshop communication to cassette tapes, from Japan’s aging problem in the countryside to gamete donors in Spain! Each research presentation was a real presentation written for the audience (vs. reading a paper), so the audience (and I) understood the presentations, which generated very good long conversations after each panel. (The conference organizers put a great deal of emphasis on accessibility, I was grateful.) I think all this is what Cultural Studies wanted to do, but doesn't often do. One thing that surprised me is that folks at the conference who study human culture self-identify and present themselves with a lofty noun: anthropologists. How does one acquire a noun-title based on a discipline, when does it start and when does it end? I am curious about this as I like the sound of saying "I'm a ________." It gives a bit of relief to one's existential crisis! But I've never heard of anyone calling themselves as such until the conference.

Besides that, I got to explore the city of Toronto. Things I liked: 

running into and talking to the owner of the original Kim’s Convenience, 

walking around with my nephew Arveen, 

eating delicious vegetarian Vietnamese food at #SaigonLotus, 

running into and exploring a very good camera shop #downtowncameratoronto, 

staying at a hostel above a jazz cafe, 

and being able to walk to the train station and take the train to the airport! 

Things I didn’t like: 

US-style macho aggressive driving/car culture. I saw too many cars pressuring pedestrians to hurry across the street. 

Also, the city’s leaders have sold the city to millionaires and speculators. There’s nowhere central or semi-central for middle- and lower-income residents (like the fictional and real owners of convenience stores) to live.

aggression from male strangers lately in Western Massachusetts

Documenting this because there are always people who will tell you that sexism and feminism are things of the past--

Monday Oct. 2, 2023, 8:10pm - walking home on sidewalk at 116 - Hadley St. intersection, a man in the passenger seat of white sedan yelled out at the top of his lungs: "YO BITCH GET OUT OF THE WAY!" in white NE (standard) American English. He sped off and turned right on Silver St.

Friday Sept. 20, 2023, 2pm - on route 47 heading towards Northampton, I was closely tailgated by a white man (between 20-30 years old) in an old faded red Toyota truck. I was going 5 mph over the speed limit hoping he would stop. Eventually he passed me on my left, rolled down his window and stuck out his middle finger and drove like that for another 5 minutes. 

I called the police both times. We need to talk about masculinity, sexism, and cultural supremacy in K-12. 

lively simile from Dahl's "Rat Catcher"

"The word 'rats' came out of his mouth with a rich, fruity sound as if he was gargling with melted butter."

CD = music/accesible community Shibuya Tower Records

In Shibuya, Tokyo there remains a Tower Records. Some may remember Tower Records from the 1990s. The Tower Records in Shibuya is massive, there must be some 6-8 floors of new CDs and vinyls. When I entered the building yesterday, I was mind-boggled and impressed! In the US, I haven't seen any major stores selling new CDs since the early 2000s. I had given up on CDs in 2012 when I left New Zealand and didn't want to travel with the weight. Since then, over the years, I had complained to family members and friends about how complicated it is nowadays to simply play an album. You can turn on Youtube or Spotify, but they're full of commercials, interruptions, and glitches. You can pay for those services, but who are you paying? Where? And even if you pay for those services, you still can't simply play the album chronologically, you have to make sure everything is charged, logged in to, or connected to Bluetooth (which for me, a hearing aids wearer, nearly always takes several attempts). Meanwhile an anonymous source take your cookies and personal data. And then you forget your password, or the internet is down, or your credit card expires, or they won't let you cancel!! Uggh!

I spent 9 years without music until two years ago when my other half gifted me a straight-forward single CD player. It's so easy, you just make sure it's plugged in, you push Eject, insert a CD, and that's it! It works 100% and it has made my life better. But it was tricky to find new CDs, most artists in the US don't sell their music in CD format anymore. 

Returning to Shibuya on a hot sunny summer day. Tower Records. It was full of people of all ages browsing CDs, talking to their friends and the salespeople about albums, people listening to CDs together with store-owned headphones. Tokyo (so it seems to me) is good at maintaining things, especially older technology. What I saw at Tower Records didn't seem like a nostalgia fad or trend, but a continued and sincere interest in old and new music. Tower Records is obviously a business, but a pretty accesible (and now small) one where the positive social life seems to outweigh any harm. The CDs cost around what they costed in the 90s, $15-17 USD (plus 10% tax free discount for foreigners).

A couple observations occurred to me: 

1) the face-to-face community that used to exist around music isn't there as much as it used to be. It might exist in Tokyo (with all their 165 live jazz cafes), and maybe in some college dorms, but I don't see it elsewhere. Sometimes people share Spotify playlists, and occasionally I will "save" something on Youtube, but I don't end up listening for the reasons above. The excitement and socialization are not there anymore, not like it was with a mixed tape/CD. Time has sped up, capitalism has become more exploitative, politics are in the way, and life has become more solitary and virtual. At Tower Records I ended up buying two new CDs (Japanese artists: Shibusashirazu and Humbert Humbert) and I got excited walking home with these in my backpack, I was going to enjoy this--albeit alone!

2) most albums are already uploaded to Youtube. So why buy the material form? For me, it was for convenience and to support the artist.

3) there's a shrine to Michael Jackson on the 7th floor of Tower Records alongside a table overflowing with fresh flowers.

3 flags seen hanging from Madrid balcones, late May 2023

- "SOS" in Chueca = housing prices are unaffordable

- yellow in Lavapiés = against drug dealing occurring in the neighborhood 

- Spanish flag several neighborhoods = increased nationalism (V0x) 

defending slow creative work

 I just heard in a documentary that it took Leonard Cohen 7 years to write the song "Hallelujah."

"Ducking away to write feverishly. If writing two words a day is a fever." 

Why the city?

"The city is the place where women had choices open up for them that were unheard of in small towns. and rural communities. Opportunities for work. Breaking free of parochial gender norms. Avoiding heterosexual marriage and motherhood. Pursuing non-traditional careers and public office. Expressing unique identities. Taking up social and political causes. Developing new kinship networks and foregrounding friendship. Participating in arts, culture, and media. All of these options are so much more available to women in cities." 

--Leslie Kern

Glorias Fuertes, things and two poems translated

I'm teaching a class about the agency/power of everyday things and objects (of the Spanish-speaking world). We are starting with some poems by Gloria Fuertes and Pablo Neruda. I could not find translations to Fuertes's poems, so I translated them in case anyone in this cyber space is interested: 

 

Things, Our Things [Las cosas, nuestras cosas]

Things, our things,

they like to be loved;

my table likes me to rest my elbows,

the chair likes me to sit in the chair,

the door likes me to open and close it

just as wine likes me to buy it and drink it,

my pencil falls apart if I pick it up and write,

my closet trembles if I open it and peek in,

the sheets are sheets when I lie on them

and the bed complains when I get up.

What will become of things when there are no more people?

Like dogs, things don't exist without their owner.

----------

The Typewriters [Las máquinas]

The dreary office

humanized itself at night

there was a light typing sound.

The typewriters were writing

--to one another--

love letters.

sleds instead of cars

a sustainable form of urban transportation ; )

first two photos taken with iphone, last with Pentax 35mm MZ-5

Welcome to the United Corporate Tricks of 99% of America: 21st Century Guide to Customer Service for Newcomers in the Unites States

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with the corrupt round-abouts and dead-ends provided by the customer service and medical industry in the US. Statistics over the last 3 decades show how the private outsourcing and automation of almost everything has played a large role in funneling money from the lower and middle classes up to the ultra wealthy (see Harvey, W. Brown, Graeber, one can google to see the high percentage of errors in medical bills). Increasingly, I have to spend hours of my Fridays waiting, getting angry, fighting billing mistakes.

Given the field I work in, I have gotten to know hundreds of people who live short or long-term in the US and I have learned that, upon arrival, they are not warned or versed in the trickery of American customer service. Imagine coming to a foreign country and having to defend yourself from this automated aggression! And in a foreign language! So, today I finally sat down and wrote some tips that I had in my head that maybe could help someone navigate this deliberately unjust and kafka-esque customer service system. Can you give me any feedback on this? Could this be useful or is it trivial stuff that could be googled? Anything you would add? 

1- an alive human being at customer service is called an "agent" or "representative." 

2 - often you don't need to waste time listening to the automated phone tree. You can simply dial zero (0) to speak with an agent/representative.

3 - if the agent/representative doesn't know, don't waste your time, you have the right to ask "can I speak/chat with your supervisor?" Often that will solve the problem. 

4 - if you can't pay your medical bill, call the local hospital/clinic to ask if there is a solution to reduce the payment or to pay over a long period of time. Very often there is. If that doesn't work, call your health insurance company, but be prepared to wait on the line for a long time. See #2 above.

5 - never pay full price for something sold at at a regional or national company/franchise. This is too vast to explain right now, but there are infinite ways to save a percentages here and there. For example, see Rakuten, credit card cash back, and store "point" cards. Also, most companies will offer 20-25% off on your first purchase or when you sign up for a store card with them. (Warning: getting involved in acquiring discounts and cards here and there makes paying bills much more complex, there's a higher chance you could make a mistake and end up with a late fee.)

6- if you get a late fee, and you have a good record of paying on time (e.g., credit cards), call the company and explain the mistake. They will usually offer a "one time courtesy credit." In other words, they will often remove the late fee.

7 - if you're fighting a billing mistake, ask for the name of the person with whom you are speaking. They won't give you their full or real name, but they will usually give you a first name or their work ID number. Document this along with the day/time you spoke with them and what they told you. You may need this information later and, the more specific it is, the more convincing it will be. 

8- at regional and national companies, do not believe discounts, free things, memberships, or fee that are presented clearly before you. They are presented with exciting hype and they promise to save you money, but that is often not the case. These are often tricks and I've seen them become more complex and sneaky over the years. For example: Costco's membership fees, Xfinity/Comcast's bundle packages, cellphone deals, and car dealerships. Ask lots of questions, even if the agent/representative gets aggressive (don't be scared, aggression is not usually a problem, usually the agent/representative hates the company as much as you do). 

9- if you sign up for some kind of membership, carefully read the fine print. Usually you will automatically be billed for the following period without any warning.  

10- be very careful signing papers at the doctor's office/clinic/hospital. Read the fine print. Often they will ask you to sign papers that entail sending your address to a third party and that third party will send you a surprise bill. 

11- if you cannot solve your problem with a business with the tips above, 4 other recourses come to mind:

    a. if you paid with a credit card -- mark the charge as "fraud" with your credit company. Call the credit card company and explain. They will ask you to reach out to the company. Tell them you already did and they may be willing to try to speak with the company on your and their behalf.

    b. I have never used it, but there is a non-profit service called the Better Business Bureau. You have the right to file an official complaint here for free. Supposedly, many have found a fair response this way.

    c. for smaller businesses, you may receive a helpful response from the company by leaving a negative Google review. (However, most of these problems are not caused by small businesses.)

    d. if you have money, you can hire a lawyer. 

Los Espookys

I can really relate to Tati. My favorite line by her is (something along the lines of): 

"I'm in the past, present, and future, that's why I act weird."

Other things I like about Los Espookys

- very clever smashing together of Spanish/English/Spanglish

- unproblematic smashing together of youth and adulthood

- humorous critique of the bourgeoisie, American imperialism, material excess, (white) elitism of both the US and Latin America

- unproblematic gender bender 

- rare pan-US Latinx/Latin American collaboration 

- deadpan/dry/cheesy humor

- esperpento: silly exaggeration of situations reflects real-life stupidity 

- humorous pastiche aesthetics (surrealism, kitsch, B films, 1980s, 1990s, and probably other styles)

- Tati's out-of-place clothing (1990s US teen suburbia) 

- all of this being made accessible to a huge public (HBO Max)!

Thank you Ana Fabrega and Julio Torres!

CDs

When I left New Zealand in 2012, I gave my CD player to one of my students. It was a bright red portable one. Since then, I really haven’t listened to music other than the random songs that come out of Spotify/Pandora when I go to the gym, almost never. During the pandemic I realized how inconvenient and complicated it has become to watch TV or to listen to the radio or a music album. Yesterday I received an Air Mail package (yippee!) from Escorial street in Barcelona. It was 8 colorful CDs from 3 different contemporary Catalan musicians #manel, #antoniafont, #amicsdelarts, and I realized the extent that streaming digital music misses out on the full album experience. Streaming music is like only looking at a tiny fragment of a painting or reading just one page of a book. … No more plastic that gets broken. No more wifi glitches or commercial interruptions! The CDs came in a little matte colorful hand-size books with playful art work, and inside of that there’s a smaller book with more artwork and the song lyrics. The songs are related to designs and textures. Tactile poems (a tactile experience) and visual work. Is it nostalgia or just a more expansive experience? Probably both!

tiny messymates

 "I love the fact that human genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of all the cells that occupy the mundane space I call my body; the other 90 percent of the cells are filled with the genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists, and such, some of which play in a symphony necessary to my being alive at all … I am vastly outnumbered by my tiny companions; better put, I become an adult human being in company with these tiny messmates. To be one is always to become with many."

-Donna Haraway, When Species Meet

In Place/Out of Place

"...the word place turns up in common phrases such as "a place for everything and everything in its place" or "know your place" or "she was put in her place." In these expressions the word place clearly refers to something more than a spatial referent. Implied in these terms is a sense of the proper. Something or someone belongs in one place and not in another. What one's place is, is clearly related to one's relation to others. In a business it is not the secretary's place to sit at the boss's desk, or the janitor's place to look through the secretary's desk. There is nothing logical about such observations; neither are they necessarily rules or laws. Rather they are expectations about behavior that relate a position in a social structure to actions in space. In this sense "place" combines the spatial with the social — it is "social space." Insofar as these expectations serve the interests of those at the top of social hierarchies, they can be described as ideological. The example of the business can be extended to society as a whole. Just as the business has a social hierarchy, society has levels of power and influence related to class, gender, race, sexuality, age, and a host of other variables. Similarly, the building in which the business is located has spatial divisions, and the world outside is divided up into segments—houses, streets, public places, libraries, shops, and so on. Just as in the business, there are expectations about behavior in these places that are related to positions in the social structure. Many of these expectations are written into law. Most, however, remain unstated and taken for granted."

konstructor by lomography

 quarantine fun!

something between coronavirus and degrowth?

Miguel Brieva

Komagome with 1980s Olympux XA with Kodak 400TX B+W 35mm film

[you can click to see larger]

define beauty // Yamanashi June 2019 (Fujifilm 16mm f/2.8)

[you can click to see larger]

In these digital pics I tried to capture the sublime feeling of an ineffable otherworldly day at Hosokawa sensei and Takami san’s house, two hours southwest of Tokyo. I didn’t have a tripod, so I used any flat surface I could find.

(Unfortunately, I couldn’t capture the fragrant smells: after-rain pine, cedar, tatami (straw), raw wood and some kind of sweet grass.)

Hosokawa sensei and Takami san helped design their house–the most sublime and original house I’ve ever been in–I call it the “ki no ie” (tree house). The design is simple, light, and vertical. It consists of 4 raw wood floors with two hollow square centers, like wood lofts on top of one another, each floor and each room are visibly connected to the others. There are NO interior walls between the rooms or floors! (A little bit as if an American backyard deck was in the shape of the number 8 and was replicated and stacked on top of one another, but more solid). 

Then there was the generous vegetarian meal they made for us. Most of the ingredients (bamboo shoots, mushrooms, “amasake” = a hot sweet rice drink) came from their garden or the nearby mountains, and, of course, so beautifully presented.

Then there was the study or seminar space as one of Hosokawa sensei’s retirement projects. (This will be a dream for many professors.) He created the “seminar no ie” (seminar house) an independent retreat space for linguistics/pedagogy grad students to come and study and hold seminars or “tertulias”! Again, the same warm bright wood, tatami architecture, and fresh wood smell.

The overcast weather saturated the color and made everything rich and quiet like a novel.

If that wasn’t enough!… another retirement project (and another professorial dream): with their students and artist friend, Ryu Motosugi, they built a cafe gallery, シュマン・デュ・ボヌール（chemin du bonheur）!

Lastly, gentle company and conversation amongst 5 people who didn’t share a common language but who spent their lives studying how to communicate with those whom we don’t share a common language!

Here’s to creativity and kindness! ありがとうございます！

Shibusashirazu Orchestra at the Pit Inn, Shinjuku

Last night I saw what was maybe the most exciting performance I've ever seen. I don't have the music vocabulary to describe it, and from what I've read online, their whole concept is to be undescribable (their name, Shibusashirazu Orchestra, translates to "Don't Be Cool Orchestra"). those who know me know I'm all about "heterogeneity" and flexibility and that's what this group performed. for 2 hours they fused and improvised jazz, 1950s exotica, psychedelic, rock, ska, klezmer, other sounds I had never heard before, and whatever visually inspired all that. i kept thinking of the D+G's idea of exploiting the medium to see what experiences it can create. that's what they did. it was loud. instruments made sounds that I didn't know they could make. and to add to that, my hearing aids, which always distort sound and differently in each ear, fit the situation well (but were triggered in ways they weren't programmed to deal with, the right one was capturing high frequencies as loud squeals, I had to remove it, so what I describes only comes from my left ear). when the big instruments rested, i could hear the xylophone, like turquoise water, it was really nice. the bananas reminded me of Dalí's baguettes. And as was typical of Tokyo jazz clubs, the space was tiny, air was thick, everything was sensorially dense and shaking, no screen mediation (except my phone). I wish I had had a better camera with me. this video clip is from my old phone.  

thanks to Toko Shiiki, without her I would have never come across this, all their public info is in Japanese. thank you, Toko!

Olympus XA with B+W 35mm film Foma Retropan Soft

over-exposed, low contrast, and with a lot of grain. 

I’m attracted to messiness, blurriness, and long exposures because as I get older and as a sure-fail level of perfection and productivity is more and more demanded around us, these other characteristics are a welcoming respite and they visually articulate my sensorial experience and my default state of mind (which is almost always looking backwards confusingly)

really, the results remind me of a flashback within a Fellini movie or some of the 1920s architecture magazines from Barcelona

"...procesos de de desclasificación [...] dejamos de ser lo que representamos y dejamos de hacer lo que nos está asignado y nos mostramos capaces de una voz y una acción que ni teníamos ni nos era legítima. [...] dejar de estar "clasificados", es decir, organizados socialmente en clases o categorías."

(Marina Garcés talking about Jacques Rancière)

this is why I always attracted to the idea of mess, 

messing things up like shuffling cards around on a table, 

it can be liberating and inclusive to confront these fears, 

this is what my book is about, messing up public space (and this is why my book never ends), 

when I was in elementary school I liked telling my classmates that my initials spelled MES, 

the person who marries outside their ethnicity or economic class, 

the high school student who gets accepted to an ivy league but chooses community college instead or accepts but sends his/her identical twin instead, 

the straight man who majors in women and gender studies, 
wearing gym clothes to an interview, 

finding platonic love with a cat, 
(there's always a cat)

the cereal boxes that were stocked upside down and in the wrong aisle, 

the neurosurgeon who reduces his/her hours in order to take a part-time job as a migrant cropper, 

the white-haired colleague who doesn't check email, 

the CEO who falls in love with an incarcerated person who is physically paralyzed, 

the meeting room with no tables or chairs, 

the person walking on the side of the highway to get to/from the grocery store, 

glitches, 

typos carved in stone, 

misprnounced

bombas y tijeras

este artículo es alucinante, en texto e imágenes.
un triple proceso de recopilar la casas, la vida y las imágenes fragmentadas por el tiempo y el humano.
el bombardeo --> el montage --> un artículo de CTXT
cemento/bombas, papel/tijeras, ojos/pantalla
por nuestro colega Sebastiaan Faber
muy util para lxs que enseñan cultura visual/historia material en español

La extraña vida póstuma de un inmueble madrileño y otras historias de la Guerra Civil 

notes - Barcelona public spaces changes observed btwn summer 2017 and summer 2018

new full length benches on Travessera de dalt and gran via

Electric scooters everywhere, on the sidewalks

(Spatial tactics ) nature not fitting. Dogs peeing, trying to scrape the cement to cover up their pee

More deliveroo types, Glovo

Less sewage smell

More donut, hamburger, taco bell, and empanadas,  japanese food, finger food, empty Chok chocolaterías

fewer chatarreros

more english in public

lazos amarillos 

Posters announcing barri meetings

Germenetes -- reivindicación to turn the old Modelo jail into a self-governed cultural center

Chatarreros hang out place - Hort de Sant Pau

Around sant antoni many new benches installed for new upscale market

Encants market -- circular racial/economic/legal strata 

Por una política de la escucha: entrevista a Jordi Carmona sobre Hannah Arendt y el 15M

socialmente útil y multi-aplicable:

eldiario.es/interferencias/15M-Hannah_Arendt-escucha_6_772782718.html

[. . . ] "la escucha tiene que ver con cierta decisión casi inicial del 15M de no buscar representantes y apostar por la igualdad. Desde esa decisión se presupone que todo el mundo tiene algo que aportar o que decir. Y no son malas condiciones para escucharse. Si hay alguien que encarna la autoridad, pues se escucha a esa figura y punto, si es que se escucha a alguien. Pero si estás en un movimiento más plural, en el que la autoridad no es claro dónde está, entonces la palabra de cualquiera cobra valor. Lo que importa no es que el otro diga la verdad, lo más justo o que esté en la vía revolucionaria verdadera. Lo que importa es escuchar porque eso favorece la emancipación política del otro. Favorece una palabra inesperada del otro, una palabra que puede hacer que recoloques tus esquemas sobre lo que son las cosas. 

Amador: Recuerdo que a veces alguien que hablaba en asamblea se ponía nervioso y los que estaban escuchando agitaban las manos para alentar con ese gesto a que esa persona continuara. Y es que esa persona que titubeaba estaba intentando encontrar sus propias palabras. Pero recuerdo también cómo los brazos se levantaban en aspas como muestra de rechazo cuando se notaba mucho que alguien se traía un discurso ya cocinado de casa, sin escucha de lo que pasaba en la plaza.

Jordi: En las asambleas había una preocupación enorme porque cualquiera hablase, especialmente las personas que podían tener menos carisma o facilidad de palabra. Es la idea de “inclusividad” tan importante en el 15M. Cuando escucho al otro, estoy incluyéndolo. Y más aún cuando es una persona que tal vez nunca participó en ese tipo de procesos, que no tiene mucha seguridad para hablar en público, etc. Esta especie de interés a priori sobre lo que va a decir el otro es una de las grandes fuerzas de los movimientos como los que tuvieron lugar en las plazas de todo el mundo." [. . . ]

articulating my kiwi experience 5.5 years later

Two aspects I really enjoyed about working in New Zealand were: (1) the extremely diverse English words and accents. NZ English takes bits and pieces from the native Maori peoples, Pacific Islanders, the UK and Asia. a linguist's dream! I learned a lot of new words there. (2) my students’ personalities. I shouldn’t generalize, but in general, they were very humble, attentive, sensitive, unrushed, and curious. 

In the last days before I left it occurred to me that I may never hear that linguistic diversity again, at least not the way it was at that moment, so I decided to record some of the people who were around. Some of the people whom I recorded I had gotten to know closely over 3 years, others I had just recently met that last semester. 

I’ll spare the long and sappy drama, and just say that, even though I remember my time in NZ everyday, after I left I didn’t have the guts to open those video files. they sat on my external hard drive for 5.5 years. but today, with time and good company, I decided to open them up, face some of the emotions, and put them together in iMovie. 

Here you have 10 kiwis talking about their worries and their morning routines:

One thing that strikes me when I watch the videos is that they were recorded BEFORE the smartphone invasion, and I wonder if that attributes to a more relaxed and focused atmosphere. 

Another thing I noticed is that I hear the NZ English in a simultaneous dual way. one is, I guess, an automatic natural way in which I listen and understand fluidly because, even though I don’t hear this way of speaking anymore, I went through the process of learning it many years ago, the knowledge is back there in my brain and it didn't have any trouble being retrieved. The second way of hearing the speech is through what I imagine my audience (mainly American-English and Spanish speakers) will hear—kiwi English for the first time, not understanding the local references or some of the words. 

The video clips are obviously very personal, but I’m sharing them because for me it’s cathartic and also because, even though these will be just brief clips of strangers for the viewer, maybe one can also appreciate or learn something from the content. and maybe for the young or depressed, it might show that the planet is still big, and there are still other livelihoods out there. 

Keith Wallace

(grammartarians, sorry, i had to write this quickly...)

last night there was an extra powerful performance at MASS MoCA, and I wished all my apolitical, center, and Republican friends could have seen it, I couldn't stop thinking of them. artist Keith Wallace presented a one-man performance about growing up in North Philadelphia, a predominantly African American an Puerto Rican area, where the public schools are some of the most under-funded in the US (makes me extremely angry) and a high percentage live under the poverty line. Keith recreated the block parties, basketball culture, his family... the main theme was the high percentage of African Americans murdered by police. ..those of us on the left already know this, we know about Black Lives Matter, and i think "murder" or "death" is the concept that sticks in our heads, maybe also "abuse of power" and "inaction" or "apathy". but what I took from the performance and the discussion afterwards was something less discussed -- the everyday fear and accumulated trauma for African Americans when they step outside of their homes, and when a cop drives by, and when a cop walks by. having to walk on eggshells at every moment to ensure they have their driver's license on them, that their phone is charged; that their driving and car plate/registration/tags/lights are perfect. if you get pulled over to make sure you try to pull over in an area where there are witnesses and street lights. -- And I think of the sloppy way I live. (my car registration and tags expired two months ago.) I kept thinking about my apolitical, center, and Republican acquaintances who either don't know "how power works", or don't care. I kept thinking of this repressive macho culture in the US that I've always tried to get far away from, that culture that normalizes aggressive behavior and guns and competition, where the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, the richest, the least sentimental, the least sympathetic are valued. Anyway, towards the end of the performance, the stage was black and silent, the protagonist was pulled over for an unknown reason, and when he reached for his cellphone, he was shot in the head.

everyone was left feeling depressed and helpless. but the discussion afterwards was helpful. the purpose of this post is to share some of the solutions/ways forward from the discussion:

- our feeling depressed, etc., doesn't help. take action. - (esp. for us academics) intellectualize less, act more.

- fund public education and educate yourself on the issues - this is uncomfortable for some white people, we just have to deal with it, it's not as uncomfortable for us as it is for others who have to live with this every time they step out of their house

- the fact that white people don't have to deal with the concept of "race" on a daily basis is an example of "white privilege" (a racist privilege)

- the helpless/not-knowing-what-to-do-feeling is false. action has never been easier to take. all we have to do is google and we can find organizations in our areas that are mobilizing against violence and discrimination.

- poor folks are often held in jail for minor non-violent crimes because they can't afford bail. there is an organization: https://nomoremoneybail.org/ that lends bail money.

- find a way to reach out to disadvantaged youth who are being trashed by our economic and public school system (this is hard to do, but, again, google)

(two final notes, that weren't mentioned last night:

1. thinking again of the apolitical, center, and Republican people i know... i imagine people living in the suburbs/rural areas may think this is all abstract, or movie-like, as i used to, some may not see the problems in their backyard and conclude that this is all baloney. but actually there are local connections. local politicians and representatives in every area hold public meetings and vote on issues that either worsen or improve these problems.

2. the months after little t won the election, i kept thinking that the solution lies in having conversation with apolitical, center, and Republican people. it hasn't worked. i thought i'd be having debates online, at the grocery store, with neighbors, and in the classroom. it hasn't happened. i haven't seen any public debate at all, not even on college campuses where debates used to be common. maybe it's impossible in a country that's dominated by social media isolation, screens, false information, poor K-12 schooling, and a president who has made so many racist comments we've lost track. so I'm thinking now that if everyone empathetic could just take a tiny action that would be good enough to start rocking the boat. that's all!

Beds in the Plazas

Recap in English-- Barcelona has been experiencing a housing crisis for the last 2 decades, it's gotten much worse since the economic crisis (2008ish) because many have returned to investing in mass tourism as a way to boost profit, but the only ones increasing their earnings are the ones who were economically fine to begin with. Part of this mass tourism industry is turning flats over to short-term foreign residents and tourists who will pay 2-4 times as much for a room or apartment. As a result, it has become near impossible for a local to continue living in Barcelona, where they grew up/where they work/where they pay taxes to their city. Many of these flats/apartments on airbnb are illegal and the grassroots mayor, Ada Colau, is trying to regulate this so locals can find housing (and avoid a Manhattan or San Francisco type of situation where only the wealthy get their way). Today they've started a creative campaign to raise awareness about this problem. They put beds in the plazas (public everyday space!) with a multilingual sign that explains the problem.

"El Ayuntamiento de Barcelona puso en marcha ayer en las calles más céntricas de la ciudad una impactante campaña comunicativa en contra de los alojamientos turísticos ilegales. El Consistorio colocó camas en la vía pública y, junto a ellas, carteles en varios idiomas que informaban: “Que esta cama esté disponible en internet no significa que sea legal”."

https://elpais.com/ccaa/2017/07/18/catalunya/1500405327_368916.html?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CC 

differences (mostly commercial) spotted in downtown Barcelona between June 2016 and July 2017

- más hamburgueserías estilo EEUU, gourmet (Les Corts, Gracia, Eixample, Gótico...)

- los tatuajes se han puesto de moda entre los jóvenes (~18-30 años)

- nueva chocolatería Chok-franquicia

- muchas tiendas botique para mujeres y turistas buscando cosas "hechas en Barcelona" (Gracia, Eixample)

- más tiendas de alquilar bicis

- nuevo servicio al domicilio Deliveroo (parecido a UberEats que también se estrenó este año)

- varias nuevas tiendas de calzado tradicional (alpalgartas, ibicencas) "hecho en España" (Gracia, Gótico, Born...)

- más tiendas de jamón serrano, se vende una porción para llevar 

- dos nuevos tipos de contenedores que complican sacar cosas (complicar la vida de los chatarreros)

- construcción en la Travessera de Dalt y El Paralelo terminada

- más bancos por Paralelo

- más tiendas de comida ecológica

- el Banc Expropiat (en C/ Travessera de Gracia) fue cerrado el verano pasado, volvió a abrirse en el barrio del Putxet y al lado del viejo local se abrió un local nuevo "El Sucursal del Banc Expropiat"

- más fruterías en Gracia

- el supermercado-franquicia Condis se ha encargado de por lo menos dos tiendas antiguas de comestibles 

- más restaurantes usando una carta multilingue de papel que los clientes rellenan con un lápiz para pedir su comida (evitando conversación)

- en Gracia, nuevas tiendas de helado-yogúr