Friday, March 13, 2009
how to test engines using chickens
Given that birds were probably responsible for the descent of the US Airways flight onto the Hudson river, you might be interested to know the complexities of testing aircraft engines for bird-proofness. Frozen chickens need not apply.
Monday, October 20, 2008
red and white
Let the battle/debate commence. I've ordered my year's white poppies, and am steeling myself to put up the poster at work. Perhaps it will even provoke debate. I'm finding considered debate in places I don't expect it at the moment, so maybe I should be more optimistic.
This is a fine image of red petals, though, don't you think? But... interesting... a lot of images of women-as-carer. I'm trying to write something about symbolism and these poor little flowers, and new ones keep popping up all the time. Fascinating.Now I think about it I've never actually seen a white poppy. Red ones, yes, lots, close to home in the Walworth allotments where even the foxes don't kill them off. And I've seen yellow ones... now what is the symbolism of them, I wonder?
Perhaps that's the answer; wear a yellow poppy and avoid the whole debate. Or just look silly.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
failing, and home
I have just failed pretty appallingly to stick to any principles of conflict resolution that I might claim to espouse. Okay, not completely failed - I was relatively calm and I did get to the bottom of issues on both sides - but essentially the conflict was resolved not by me (or the other party) but by the artful faciliation of my flatmate, Danny, who wouldn't go near an 'Alternatives to Violence' workshop, even if it was held in our own flat. It was humbling.
The ridiculous thing is that the conflict is the latest installment in a neighbourly saga that has been running for about 18 months, and it's pretty much the only conflict I face in my life. I finally flipped a couple of weeks ago and stopped trying to be reasonable and just let myself be angry. It didn't help; what I didn't want to happen happened anyway, and I was still left a little scared to walk up to my own house. Finally, today, with the help (limited) of a red line on a leasehold agreement and the aid (exceptionally useful) of the practical, realistic outlook of my flatmate, things were talked through and more or less resolved. After Danny had left I dragged things deeper, which looked like it was making it worse (and I semi-consciously knew it), but both parties said we had felt that we were only giving and not recieving, and angry that we had (we thought) been presented with outcomes without discussion. By the end we were, at least, discussing the merits of varnish and winter jasmine, but it was a long road and not one I'm proud of.
And all this over some gravel, a wheelie bin and some plant pots. Pathetic.
(Though it was actually over ownership, feeling bullied, lied to and vulnerable... most of which also came out. Plant pots were just the pawns in the rather messy game.)
Later I wondered whether I should give up my attempts at non-violence workshop facilitation and recognise what a hypocrite I am. Realistically that's not much of an option, since I haven't been doing many workshops recently. Writing this post is largely an admission of guilt and an attempt to deal with the failure... which is also a recognition that I am not very good at dealing with conflict, I'd far rather avoid it, and when I get into it, I'm as stubborn as I am the rest of the time.
The last month's tour of European churches... this one in Copenhagen
The irony of my pavement-side dispute is that I arrived back in the UK yesterday from Copenhagen, having spent four days there, and a week in Italy two weeks previously, and was incredibly glad to be here. In Denmark a friend was discussing the possibility of moving to London for a while, and I found myself thinking the idea an exhausting one - which said far more about my own desire to be home than her plans (and I'd be very happy to have her around in London). Enough with the moving around. Both Italy and Denmark were wonderful in their own ways. But there's a Russian phrase that works better in Russian but just about withstands the translation: v gosti khorosho, doma luchshe - it's good to go visiting, it's better at home.
...and this one in Eggi, Italy
It's not only my home itself, though it is looking and feeling pretty fine to be here, thanks in no small part to Danny's four weekend ordeal of painting the front door, and a picture hanging session this afternoon, pre-conflict. And my cat, slightly nuts, exceptionally stubborn, explorative yet likes being home even if she doesn't admit it (remind you of anyone?).
It's being in Britain, which surprises me. I don't tend to think of myself and 'my country' as all that connected, evidenced the quotation marks. A friend recently commented that, 'We do things well in this country; I'm proud of it', or words to that effect. The immediate prompt was a spectacular engineering feat (Terminal 5, if you must know - the largest freestanding building in the country, took 20,000 people to build, £4.3 billion, and some damn fine metal joints), but the comment was, is, applicable to much else (if not conflict resolution). I remember thinking that I don't associate myself in my mind to the myth that is the nation of Britain, even if I work for it. But arriving back, cold, I was soothed by the music on Heathrow Express (if not by the price!), the clouds and pale sky, the crowds in Paddington, the overwarm tube ride. If this isn't Britain, I'm not sure what is, and I like it.
The ridiculous thing is that the conflict is the latest installment in a neighbourly saga that has been running for about 18 months, and it's pretty much the only conflict I face in my life. I finally flipped a couple of weeks ago and stopped trying to be reasonable and just let myself be angry. It didn't help; what I didn't want to happen happened anyway, and I was still left a little scared to walk up to my own house. Finally, today, with the help (limited) of a red line on a leasehold agreement and the aid (exceptionally useful) of the practical, realistic outlook of my flatmate, things were talked through and more or less resolved. After Danny had left I dragged things deeper, which looked like it was making it worse (and I semi-consciously knew it), but both parties said we had felt that we were only giving and not recieving, and angry that we had (we thought) been presented with outcomes without discussion. By the end we were, at least, discussing the merits of varnish and winter jasmine, but it was a long road and not one I'm proud of.
And all this over some gravel, a wheelie bin and some plant pots. Pathetic.
(Though it was actually over ownership, feeling bullied, lied to and vulnerable... most of which also came out. Plant pots were just the pawns in the rather messy game.)
Later I wondered whether I should give up my attempts at non-violence workshop facilitation and recognise what a hypocrite I am. Realistically that's not much of an option, since I haven't been doing many workshops recently. Writing this post is largely an admission of guilt and an attempt to deal with the failure... which is also a recognition that I am not very good at dealing with conflict, I'd far rather avoid it, and when I get into it, I'm as stubborn as I am the rest of the time.
The last month's tour of European churches... this one in Copenhagen
The irony of my pavement-side dispute is that I arrived back in the UK yesterday from Copenhagen, having spent four days there, and a week in Italy two weeks previously, and was incredibly glad to be here. In Denmark a friend was discussing the possibility of moving to London for a while, and I found myself thinking the idea an exhausting one - which said far more about my own desire to be home than her plans (and I'd be very happy to have her around in London). Enough with the moving around. Both Italy and Denmark were wonderful in their own ways. But there's a Russian phrase that works better in Russian but just about withstands the translation: v gosti khorosho, doma luchshe - it's good to go visiting, it's better at home.
...and this one in Eggi, Italy
It's not only my home itself, though it is looking and feeling pretty fine to be here, thanks in no small part to Danny's four weekend ordeal of painting the front door, and a picture hanging session this afternoon, pre-conflict. And my cat, slightly nuts, exceptionally stubborn, explorative yet likes being home even if she doesn't admit it (remind you of anyone?).
It's being in Britain, which surprises me. I don't tend to think of myself and 'my country' as all that connected, evidenced the quotation marks. A friend recently commented that, 'We do things well in this country; I'm proud of it', or words to that effect. The immediate prompt was a spectacular engineering feat (Terminal 5, if you must know - the largest freestanding building in the country, took 20,000 people to build, £4.3 billion, and some damn fine metal joints), but the comment was, is, applicable to much else (if not conflict resolution). I remember thinking that I don't associate myself in my mind to the myth that is the nation of Britain, even if I work for it. But arriving back, cold, I was soothed by the music on Heathrow Express (if not by the price!), the clouds and pale sky, the crowds in Paddington, the overwarm tube ride. If this isn't Britain, I'm not sure what is, and I like it.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
replenished and replete
As I walked through Oslo airport I decided that American town planners would do well to make the trip. Everything, well almost everything, around Oslo seems beautiful, neat and fresh.
I also thought that observation becomes easier, or at least more focussed, when there is a desire to write it all down afterwards. Ragnfrid, a writer-now-publisher, agreed. (Someone else told me recently of a retreat where she said nothing for a week. By the end she could smell more clearly, heard more intricate sounds, and was intimately atuned to her surroundings.).
Long weekends are the way forward. In a sea of reports, workshops, presentations and generally feeling tired (I posted about that in March - being tired is dull, but ever present when you are), it was wonderful to get out, get away, and catch up with a friend I had not seen for two years. Remarkable then that we started talking almost as soon as we waved hello and didn't really stop till we waved goodbye. It was fantastic.
It's always humbling being around Scandinavians, as most of them speak English (and inumerable other languages) embarrassingly fluently. Ragnfrid is no exception, and nor were her friends and relations - every one of the visitors and acquaintances we engaged with that weekend spoke near perfect English, and I'm sure I learnt more English words in three days in Norway than I have in months. Replenished, for example - "May I replenish your tea?". She didn't say that, a Welsh lady did; but it sent me into ponderings about how we use that word, and replete, and many others.
Ragnfrid pushed my comfort zones by taking me mountain biking, funnily enough along the same and neighbouring tracks to the ones that Sahra and skiied along four years previously. I'm not very good at being out of control, or rather feeling out of control, and skidding downhill on gravel tracks was just that - and hence good for me!
In ideal long-weekend fashion, we ate lots, and ate well, and ate Norwegian. Salmon, apple cake, waffles with tea. Talked of Meskhetian Turks and friends teaching science in schools in South Africa; of being younger and being older and knowing what we do and don't want in our lives; of families of four and care systems and... I can't remember it all. Just the sense of it.
On Sunday we headed for a flea market in a local school, clearly the place for 30-something liberal Norwegians to meet, as we must have said hello to five friends in the space of half an hour. In the afternoon a concert given by young music award winners: a violinist who expressed the pain of the music with an expressionless face and a pianist whose facial contortions suggested knowledge a 16 year old should not, could not have.
And then suddenly it was over. I was waving through a tram window and a fantastic couple of people I hope I don't wait 2 years to see again. Replenished, though not really replete.
I also thought that observation becomes easier, or at least more focussed, when there is a desire to write it all down afterwards. Ragnfrid, a writer-now-publisher, agreed. (Someone else told me recently of a retreat where she said nothing for a week. By the end she could smell more clearly, heard more intricate sounds, and was intimately atuned to her surroundings.).
Long weekends are the way forward. In a sea of reports, workshops, presentations and generally feeling tired (I posted about that in March - being tired is dull, but ever present when you are), it was wonderful to get out, get away, and catch up with a friend I had not seen for two years. Remarkable then that we started talking almost as soon as we waved hello and didn't really stop till we waved goodbye. It was fantastic.
It's always humbling being around Scandinavians, as most of them speak English (and inumerable other languages) embarrassingly fluently. Ragnfrid is no exception, and nor were her friends and relations - every one of the visitors and acquaintances we engaged with that weekend spoke near perfect English, and I'm sure I learnt more English words in three days in Norway than I have in months. Replenished, for example - "May I replenish your tea?". She didn't say that, a Welsh lady did; but it sent me into ponderings about how we use that word, and replete, and many others.
Ragnfrid pushed my comfort zones by taking me mountain biking, funnily enough along the same and neighbouring tracks to the ones that Sahra and skiied along four years previously. I'm not very good at being out of control, or rather feeling out of control, and skidding downhill on gravel tracks was just that - and hence good for me!
In ideal long-weekend fashion, we ate lots, and ate well, and ate Norwegian. Salmon, apple cake, waffles with tea. Talked of Meskhetian Turks and friends teaching science in schools in South Africa; of being younger and being older and knowing what we do and don't want in our lives; of families of four and care systems and... I can't remember it all. Just the sense of it.
On Sunday we headed for a flea market in a local school, clearly the place for 30-something liberal Norwegians to meet, as we must have said hello to five friends in the space of half an hour. In the afternoon a concert given by young music award winners: a violinist who expressed the pain of the music with an expressionless face and a pianist whose facial contortions suggested knowledge a 16 year old should not, could not have.
And then suddenly it was over. I was waving through a tram window and a fantastic couple of people I hope I don't wait 2 years to see again. Replenished, though not really replete.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
the chemistry glass of structure and content
Years ago I came across the Soviet (socialist? communist? Marxist? don't know) way of dividing things into content and structure. I found it first in work by Eidlitz on 'nationalities' in the former Soviet Union, in what was, for me, an unusually pro-Soviet (or at least not fervently anti-Soviet) English language publication. The model is of a glass, with the structure being the glass, and the liquid being the content. (For some reason I always see this glass as one of those straight-sided measuring vessels we used in chemistry; perhaps it's because there's a science or an implied accuracy about them). Eidlitz discusses the concept in the context of Soviet Nationalities policy, in which each people, narod, was organised in such a way that encouraged them to be Soviet in structure, national in content. That is, their political and economic structure was Soviet, but their cultural bits (in the limited definition of culture - songs, food, language, dance) were encouraged to be 'national'. Thus leading (in theory) to national diversity in a Soviet Union. (The Soviets were, sometimes, better at encouraging cultural diversity than the lambasts they get from some might suggest.)
National in this context does not mean the same as nationalist, which was a dirty word among the Russians and Meskhetian Turks I knew in 2000. Instead it's a concept with a well-developed theorising in Russia/the Soviet Union, and a concept core to the organisation of peoples into republics, special regions and the rest. Much as our colonial policy has its legacy in today's violent complications in Africa, so too the current complications in the Caucasus have some of their roots in nationality policy. I'm not sure it's helpful to be critical of that policy in hindsight - criticising things that happened over 80 years ago is a little problematic as hindsight is 20:20 - after all, they had to organise these millions of people somehow, and a theory-based organisational plan is probably better than nothing. (That view doesn't stop me lambasting British colonial practices though. I'm a hypocrite).
Anyway, back to structure and content and my chemistry glass. I've been going back to old debates about structure and agency, the classic social theory chicken/egg problem of which has more influence over human action, shared concepts about the world and how to order it (social structure) or an individual's free will and choice (agency)? Of course they each influence the other, though some (particularly many anthropologists) see, or saw, social structure as having the edge. It's not quite the same as the structure/content glass, but the dichotomy is good to think with. And it's (kind of) helping think about other human dichotomies in currently (the violence/non-violence thing being one), where one thing ends and another begins. The problem is that they become continuums rather than dichotomies when they represent reality, at which point they become less good to think with. My dilemma is, is it more productive to use a dichotomy to think with (and act according to) and accept that it doesn't entirely fit reality, or to accept everything flows into one... but then have little guidance on how to see the world and how to act in it?
I'm not entirely sure where this is going. Product of writing a report - it's always exciting and confusing at the same time. And sleep-depriving: in semi-sleep last night I vaguely remember thinking of one arm as agency and the other as structure, with the rest of me the human action in the middle. Odd. Like the Vikings swarming my head in November last year when I tried to write about the drivers of planning for educational provision in emergencies. I have no idea now why I was dreaming of Vikings, except that at the time it felt very relevant to advocacy and fundraising. And the Vikings have stayed with me as much as the report still hasn't gone away.
National in this context does not mean the same as nationalist, which was a dirty word among the Russians and Meskhetian Turks I knew in 2000. Instead it's a concept with a well-developed theorising in Russia/the Soviet Union, and a concept core to the organisation of peoples into republics, special regions and the rest. Much as our colonial policy has its legacy in today's violent complications in Africa, so too the current complications in the Caucasus have some of their roots in nationality policy. I'm not sure it's helpful to be critical of that policy in hindsight - criticising things that happened over 80 years ago is a little problematic as hindsight is 20:20 - after all, they had to organise these millions of people somehow, and a theory-based organisational plan is probably better than nothing. (That view doesn't stop me lambasting British colonial practices though. I'm a hypocrite).
Anyway, back to structure and content and my chemistry glass. I've been going back to old debates about structure and agency, the classic social theory chicken/egg problem of which has more influence over human action, shared concepts about the world and how to order it (social structure) or an individual's free will and choice (agency)? Of course they each influence the other, though some (particularly many anthropologists) see, or saw, social structure as having the edge. It's not quite the same as the structure/content glass, but the dichotomy is good to think with. And it's (kind of) helping think about other human dichotomies in currently (the violence/non-violence thing being one), where one thing ends and another begins. The problem is that they become continuums rather than dichotomies when they represent reality, at which point they become less good to think with. My dilemma is, is it more productive to use a dichotomy to think with (and act according to) and accept that it doesn't entirely fit reality, or to accept everything flows into one... but then have little guidance on how to see the world and how to act in it?
I'm not entirely sure where this is going. Product of writing a report - it's always exciting and confusing at the same time. And sleep-depriving: in semi-sleep last night I vaguely remember thinking of one arm as agency and the other as structure, with the rest of me the human action in the middle. Odd. Like the Vikings swarming my head in November last year when I tried to write about the drivers of planning for educational provision in emergencies. I have no idea now why I was dreaming of Vikings, except that at the time it felt very relevant to advocacy and fundraising. And the Vikings have stayed with me as much as the report still hasn't gone away.
Monday, August 18, 2008
celebrate
We have inadvertently been celebrating National Allotment Week. I knew there was a reason I took marrows, rhubarb and beans into work. I'm with Alex James on courgettes though. 'The bounty of nature is such that when courgettes are ready, there are suddenly rather a lot of courgettes. There is nothing to put one off courgettes as much as the sight of lots and lots of them and more where they come from'. Sunday's harvest: 7, and no marrows.
And we are now celebrating Southwest Trains' National Customer Service week. Never have I heard as an enthusiastic an announcement as the man declaring this fact, asking "have you recieved special service from Southwest trains? Pick up a form from our travel office and let us know..." I first heard this at 9.41pm on Friday (don't), when each of the London-bound passengers occupied their own bench along the platform, and we all tried to avoid watching
a 15 year old couple (boy: skinny, beany hat, smoking; girl: much larger, shorts she kept pulling up) roll all over each other on the bench opposite. Bless. But thank god for inhibitions. (Is that right? I mean the opposite of 'no inhibitions'.. so it must be right). Anyway, I wondered why on earth we are trying to celebrate the people who collect our tickets. I mean, no offence meant, they're nice enough blokes but... fill in a form? I pondered India, wondered whether peons would ever be celebrated in this way.. are we trying to put a not only a face but an identity on bureacracy? The thought didn't last long - the train came - but I'd rather celebrate the binmen.
It's still International Year of the Potato, which Danny and I just celebrated with our own harvest. They're just potatoes really.
And we are now celebrating Southwest Trains' National Customer Service week. Never have I heard as an enthusiastic an announcement as the man declaring this fact, asking "have you recieved special service from Southwest trains? Pick up a form from our travel office and let us know..." I first heard this at 9.41pm on Friday (don't), when each of the London-bound passengers occupied their own bench along the platform, and we all tried to avoid watching
a 15 year old couple (boy: skinny, beany hat, smoking; girl: much larger, shorts she kept pulling up) roll all over each other on the bench opposite. Bless. But thank god for inhibitions. (Is that right? I mean the opposite of 'no inhibitions'.. so it must be right). Anyway, I wondered why on earth we are trying to celebrate the people who collect our tickets. I mean, no offence meant, they're nice enough blokes but... fill in a form? I pondered India, wondered whether peons would ever be celebrated in this way.. are we trying to put a not only a face but an identity on bureacracy? The thought didn't last long - the train came - but I'd rather celebrate the binmen.
It's still International Year of the Potato, which Danny and I just celebrated with our own harvest. They're just potatoes really.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
consider the poppies...
Saturday's Guardian includes an article on the complete failure of the US, UK and everyone else's attempt to control the poppy trade in Afghanistan. Apparently £1.7bn have been spent over six years in counter-narcotics activities, and yet the £2bn trade continues, and continues to grow. The UN's conservative estimate is that the Taleban's 10% tax on poppy farmers earns them £50m a year. Quite enough to fund an insurgency, it seems.
Now, I'm no economist, despite the best efforts of some of my friends to convert me, but there's something here about supply and demand. Destroying the supply bit doesn't seem to be working, so what about the demand side? What could we have spent that £1.7bn on in the US and the UK in relation to drug programmes? What concerns me more than where our governments spend their money is the attempt to shift moral responsibility for what is really 'our' problem. Thrashing down or aerial spraying of poppy plants is of course going to enrage Afghan farmers. It's like a foreign power destroying grape vines in France because they don't approve of alcohol. We'd be outraged, even if we didn't drink wine ourselves. Why should an Afghan farmer, who (according to the Guardian) earns £1,658 from a poppy harvest when a wheat harvest would give him a third less, care that heroine is illegal in the UK?
Someone told me last weekend that if I didn't like something I should offer an alternative; a good consensus process position. The context was my rant about knives and orchestras, but it could apply to this too. This time I hold up my hands and say I don't know about the alternative, although we could put the WI ladies onto it - they have been working at decriminalising prostitution, and I'm sure they'd have some creative ideas on drugs too.
Actually that's not as flippant as it sounds; ...bear with me while I get to the point.
In a rather stretching conversation last weekend an acquaintance demanded to know whether I would kill him if he was about to kill my mother. (This was another attempt to get me to defend my 'extreme' position that killing people is always wrong. It's like meat-eaters trying to catch out vegetarians for eating cheese. Maybe they do it because they subconsciously feel guilty. We humour them, because so do we.) It pushed me into a corner I know I have been avoiding, because it's the same question as, 'What would you have done about Adolf Hitler?' My initial response was that I would hope not to have got to the point where you are about to kill my mother; I'd have missed some other options along the way if we were already there. (That, however, being the same kind of answer as 'Oo, if you're trying to get to Holborn I wouldn't start from here'. I still need to get to Holborn, wherever I'm starting from.)
So I broke down his question into three:
a) would it be right to kill him? No, killing people is always wrong.
b) would I be able to kill him? Unfortunately yes; as a fallible human being I know I have a capacity for violence (not least as I managed to break my brother's arm. I was 7 at the time, but that's no excuse).
c) would I kill him? That's the one I can't answer right now, it's context specific, and... I would hope I would have been creative enough not to get to c).
Despite being uncomfortably pushed into this corner, it was rather a relief to have got there, not least because I can retain a) without ever doubting it, and have spent enough time thinking about b) in my PBI career to know that I'm human, and that's okay. The WI come back in at c), because it is creative thinking that will get us to the point of being able to say 'No'.
In what was almost a repeat of the same 'push Kathryn into a corner' conversation this week at work, a colleague asked me what I would do if I was a Sierra Leonean villager, and a band of rebels raided the village, clearly looking to kill everyone. Would I use violence then? Well, if I was able to think straight, no, not least because I would know there are more of them than me and my violence is going to fail - they would beat me and kill me. I would hope that I would be able to imagine other ways of engaging with them, of convincing them to talk first, of escaping the petrifying relationship of power where they are in the supremacy...
None of this I said very clearly at the time, and my colleague concluded that I, like everyone else, see violence as a last resort. No! I don't believe that most people see violence as a last resort. I do believe that most people believe that they see violence as a last resort. But in practice... violence is an easy option. It's a lot easier to trample poppy fields in Afghanistan than it is to catch and reform drug dealers and users in King's Cross. I think in terms of a list of 'resorts', violence usually comes somewhere in the middle. It is far, far harder (particularly when someone has a gun to my mother's head, or when the Taleban is making a fortune out of poppy cultivation) to think, 'Right, what is going to give me, my mother and you the best outcome from all this? Why do you have a gun to my mother's head? What do you want, and more importantly, what do you need? Why have we got to this point?'
(Somewhere in all these posts is Helen's story about asking directions to Bethnal Green tube to diffuse a far less tense situation, but the principle is the same. Think. Creatively. Give the other person a way out and deal with my own emotions separately.)
Anyway, back to the poppies. I have learnt this year that poppies are going to do their own thing, whatever we do to them. They're beautiful, delicate creatures, so that when a couple appear in my nascent courgette patch earlier this year, I left them space to thrive. Thrive they did, and they had babies. Now I am regularly digging up poppies among the courgettes, tomatoes, strawberries and asparagus. Now they have arrived, they're here to stay, and unless I am ever vigilant, they are going to become one of the many attractive weeds that now make their home in my £10 plot of land. When I first took it over, it was a mess, but the biggest beast was horseradish. That is now under control, but the odd plant reappears in the wrong place. But so do nasturtiums, buttercups, tomatoes, potatoes, lemon balm, raspberries, mint and fox gloves. They're all beautiful, and I let the odd one stay because they're beautiful. They also remind me that, much as I like to think I am, I am not in control, and the allotment looks a lot more attractive for it.
So I still have no real solution for what to do about the Afghanistan-to-King's Cross poppy trade, though I would suggest we spend more time looking in our own backyard, and remember that poppies have their own agency, never mind the Afghan farmers. The fields of Flanders told us that, which is why they are the symbol of the Royal British Legion, and we wear them in the millions in November. Ironic thought.. could we convince the British population not to wear red poppies this year, because in the contemporary context they are far more symbolic of the Taleban's financial success than they are of the deaths of our forefathers in France?
Talking of which, a large red plastic poppy money collection box has appeared by the till in the coffee shop at work. In August! It's three months till Remembrance Day.... It did prompt me to wonder whether I will be wearing my white poppy with pride this year. (Given that it symbolises 'the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts that killing strangers', I should, but I'm not sure how brave I am. Or rather, if it would only make me the odd weirdo again, would it do any good?) Suggestions welcome in a comment box near you.
Meanwhile, I continue to have my weekly debate with the woodlice over who owns the strawberry patch (they do, of course; possession is nine tenths of the law. I'm never going to admit that to them though. And they leave me enough to allow the debate to continue). And, along with the rest of the tomato-growing UK population, I wait for the sun to come out long enough to turn my bounty of green fruits into red delights.
Now, I'm no economist, despite the best efforts of some of my friends to convert me, but there's something here about supply and demand. Destroying the supply bit doesn't seem to be working, so what about the demand side? What could we have spent that £1.7bn on in the US and the UK in relation to drug programmes? What concerns me more than where our governments spend their money is the attempt to shift moral responsibility for what is really 'our' problem. Thrashing down or aerial spraying of poppy plants is of course going to enrage Afghan farmers. It's like a foreign power destroying grape vines in France because they don't approve of alcohol. We'd be outraged, even if we didn't drink wine ourselves. Why should an Afghan farmer, who (according to the Guardian) earns £1,658 from a poppy harvest when a wheat harvest would give him a third less, care that heroine is illegal in the UK?Someone told me last weekend that if I didn't like something I should offer an alternative; a good consensus process position. The context was my rant about knives and orchestras, but it could apply to this too. This time I hold up my hands and say I don't know about the alternative, although we could put the WI ladies onto it - they have been working at decriminalising prostitution, and I'm sure they'd have some creative ideas on drugs too.
Actually that's not as flippant as it sounds; ...bear with me while I get to the point.In a rather stretching conversation last weekend an acquaintance demanded to know whether I would kill him if he was about to kill my mother. (This was another attempt to get me to defend my 'extreme' position that killing people is always wrong. It's like meat-eaters trying to catch out vegetarians for eating cheese. Maybe they do it because they subconsciously feel guilty. We humour them, because so do we.) It pushed me into a corner I know I have been avoiding, because it's the same question as, 'What would you have done about Adolf Hitler?' My initial response was that I would hope not to have got to the point where you are about to kill my mother; I'd have missed some other options along the way if we were already there. (That, however, being the same kind of answer as 'Oo, if you're trying to get to Holborn I wouldn't start from here'. I still need to get to Holborn, wherever I'm starting from.)
So I broke down his question into three:
a) would it be right to kill him? No, killing people is always wrong.
b) would I be able to kill him? Unfortunately yes; as a fallible human being I know I have a capacity for violence (not least as I managed to break my brother's arm. I was 7 at the time, but that's no excuse).
c) would I kill him? That's the one I can't answer right now, it's context specific, and... I would hope I would have been creative enough not to get to c).
Despite being uncomfortably pushed into this corner, it was rather a relief to have got there, not least because I can retain a) without ever doubting it, and have spent enough time thinking about b) in my PBI career to know that I'm human, and that's okay. The WI come back in at c), because it is creative thinking that will get us to the point of being able to say 'No'.
In what was almost a repeat of the same 'push Kathryn into a corner' conversation this week at work, a colleague asked me what I would do if I was a Sierra Leonean villager, and a band of rebels raided the village, clearly looking to kill everyone. Would I use violence then? Well, if I was able to think straight, no, not least because I would know there are more of them than me and my violence is going to fail - they would beat me and kill me. I would hope that I would be able to imagine other ways of engaging with them, of convincing them to talk first, of escaping the petrifying relationship of power where they are in the supremacy...
None of this I said very clearly at the time, and my colleague concluded that I, like everyone else, see violence as a last resort. No! I don't believe that most people see violence as a last resort. I do believe that most people believe that they see violence as a last resort. But in practice... violence is an easy option. It's a lot easier to trample poppy fields in Afghanistan than it is to catch and reform drug dealers and users in King's Cross. I think in terms of a list of 'resorts', violence usually comes somewhere in the middle. It is far, far harder (particularly when someone has a gun to my mother's head, or when the Taleban is making a fortune out of poppy cultivation) to think, 'Right, what is going to give me, my mother and you the best outcome from all this? Why do you have a gun to my mother's head? What do you want, and more importantly, what do you need? Why have we got to this point?'
(Somewhere in all these posts is Helen's story about asking directions to Bethnal Green tube to diffuse a far less tense situation, but the principle is the same. Think. Creatively. Give the other person a way out and deal with my own emotions separately.)
Anyway, back to the poppies. I have learnt this year that poppies are going to do their own thing, whatever we do to them. They're beautiful, delicate creatures, so that when a couple appear in my nascent courgette patch earlier this year, I left them space to thrive. Thrive they did, and they had babies. Now I am regularly digging up poppies among the courgettes, tomatoes, strawberries and asparagus. Now they have arrived, they're here to stay, and unless I am ever vigilant, they are going to become one of the many attractive weeds that now make their home in my £10 plot of land. When I first took it over, it was a mess, but the biggest beast was horseradish. That is now under control, but the odd plant reappears in the wrong place. But so do nasturtiums, buttercups, tomatoes, potatoes, lemon balm, raspberries, mint and fox gloves. They're all beautiful, and I let the odd one stay because they're beautiful. They also remind me that, much as I like to think I am, I am not in control, and the allotment looks a lot more attractive for it.So I still have no real solution for what to do about the Afghanistan-to-King's Cross poppy trade, though I would suggest we spend more time looking in our own backyard, and remember that poppies have their own agency, never mind the Afghan farmers. The fields of Flanders told us that, which is why they are the symbol of the Royal British Legion, and we wear them in the millions in November. Ironic thought.. could we convince the British population not to wear red poppies this year, because in the contemporary context they are far more symbolic of the Taleban's financial success than they are of the deaths of our forefathers in France?
Talking of which, a large red plastic poppy money collection box has appeared by the till in the coffee shop at work. In August! It's three months till Remembrance Day.... It did prompt me to wonder whether I will be wearing my white poppy with pride this year. (Given that it symbolises 'the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts that killing strangers', I should, but I'm not sure how brave I am. Or rather, if it would only make me the odd weirdo again, would it do any good?) Suggestions welcome in a comment box near you.
Meanwhile, I continue to have my weekly debate with the woodlice over who owns the strawberry patch (they do, of course; possession is nine tenths of the law. I'm never going to admit that to them though. And they leave me enough to allow the debate to continue). And, along with the rest of the tomato-growing UK population, I wait for the sun to come out long enough to turn my bounty of green fruits into red delights.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
proms without the knives this time
It was excellent. I'd never really understood what difference a conductor makes - after all, these orchestras are professional, know what they are doing: why do they need a man with a little stick standing in front of them? And perhaps he didn't make all that much difference to the music itself. But Gustavo Dudamel did make the whole experience a little more energising...
Aged 27, with a mop of long curly hair, he literally bounced up and down on the podium. All his body was doing the conducting, not just that little stick. But perhaps most endearing was that he took bows with the orchestra, standing among the violinists not alone on the poduium, and when pointing out individuals for applause, he walked to them, rather than pointing from afar. And he got the brass section doing a little dance at the end of the second, Latinesque, encore, which sent a frisson of excitement down our middle class spines.
And the music... I'm not very good at (classical) music. I can very rarely remember a piece, neither its name nor, often, the melody itself. Mother reassures me that she knew nothing of classical music at my age either, but I don't hold out much hope. I've been enjoying £6 tickets at the RFH and the odd Prom for years now, and next to nothing sticks. I like Rachmaninov because his music reminds me of sweeping Russian steppes and amazing huge paintings of sweeping Russian steppes in the National Gallery a few years ago. Beyond that, and Shostakovich (not only, but partly, as my parents and I found his grave in the Moscow convent cemetry in 2000), I don't really know what I'm talking about. But it is calming, allows drifting off, and fascinating to watch a bunch of people in black and white with bits of metal and wood all creating a coherent, moving, organism.
Anyway, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, it turns out, is really rather good. One of the movements has a haunting solo oboe, sad, solitary, and accompanied by timpani rumbles of thunder. It took me to, hmm, Russian steppes. (I always have a soft spot for timpanists, and not only because they tune their instruments seemingly silently, in the middle of pieces of music, laying their heads affectionately close to the skins. No, once upon a time I attempted to play the timpani in Wilmslow High School's orchestra, but I couldn't tune them, which I now realise is a core part of the job. So I wasn't much good, and moved on to learning 20 ways (really) to play the triangle and became a dab hand at a tamborine. Honest, it's harder than it looks.) Sorry, lost it... Berlioz's haunting is more important than my timpani.
Mum and I had a running discussion about the middle class nature of the audience. (Sorry Julian, but she scoffed at your suggestion that classical music does not mostly cater for the middle band). There was, perhaps, a 2% ethnic minority in the audience... but they were mostly Japanese. Or Latin. Or both, as with our neighbours, who were Brazilian Japanese. And hence far more interested in talking to us than any Brit usually is.
Actually, I have a serious point and not just a prod at Mr Lloyd Webber. Gustavo was brilliant because he changed the energy in what is a huge and difficult to fill space. Very rarely do I applaud like a really mean it (the problem with having studied ritual is that you know one when you see one; not that most people don't know that also), but here I did. He ran on and off the stage at every round, and gave us three encores, one of which no-one knew what it was but it was so smooth and gentle, it sucked you in.
Point I'm trying to get to: that music is never just the sounds. It is the people who make the sounds, but more importantly (for my debate with JLW), the people who listen to them. Surely we chose music we like in part because we like what it is associated with, and who it is associated with. There are aspirations involved, whether they are expressed in the Royal Albert Hall or in Reading, Cambridge or the Isle of Wight. I gather much of my own music taste by osmosis from the people I live with, or am around, and sometimes that's a two way process. If our friends like something we're more likely to like it too. I used to apologise for my failings in this sphere, but now I guess its not that unusual. I'm just worst at it than most.
And as some one sitting not very far from me just said of Dudamel, "I bet he has lots of middle class groupies offering themselves up." Indeed.
Kind of returning briefly to the knives, this summarises the story of El Sistema, the inspirational system that has put hundreds of poor/'vulnerable' children through Venezualan orchestras, of which the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuala is one. Gustavo is but a part, and not the instigator, though he serves as a good ambassador. Almost just because it was amusing to do so, this April I purchased 4 tickets for a concert they are giving next April. It looks like it's going to be fun. Classical music could do with more shell suits, if only because they shock the middle classes.
Aged 27, with a mop of long curly hair, he literally bounced up and down on the podium. All his body was doing the conducting, not just that little stick. But perhaps most endearing was that he took bows with the orchestra, standing among the violinists not alone on the poduium, and when pointing out individuals for applause, he walked to them, rather than pointing from afar. And he got the brass section doing a little dance at the end of the second, Latinesque, encore, which sent a frisson of excitement down our middle class spines.And the music... I'm not very good at (classical) music. I can very rarely remember a piece, neither its name nor, often, the melody itself. Mother reassures me that she knew nothing of classical music at my age either, but I don't hold out much hope. I've been enjoying £6 tickets at the RFH and the odd Prom for years now, and next to nothing sticks. I like Rachmaninov because his music reminds me of sweeping Russian steppes and amazing huge paintings of sweeping Russian steppes in the National Gallery a few years ago. Beyond that, and Shostakovich (not only, but partly, as my parents and I found his grave in the Moscow convent cemetry in 2000), I don't really know what I'm talking about. But it is calming, allows drifting off, and fascinating to watch a bunch of people in black and white with bits of metal and wood all creating a coherent, moving, organism.
Anyway, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, it turns out, is really rather good. One of the movements has a haunting solo oboe, sad, solitary, and accompanied by timpani rumbles of thunder. It took me to, hmm, Russian steppes. (I always have a soft spot for timpanists, and not only because they tune their instruments seemingly silently, in the middle of pieces of music, laying their heads affectionately close to the skins. No, once upon a time I attempted to play the timpani in Wilmslow High School's orchestra, but I couldn't tune them, which I now realise is a core part of the job. So I wasn't much good, and moved on to learning 20 ways (really) to play the triangle and became a dab hand at a tamborine. Honest, it's harder than it looks.) Sorry, lost it... Berlioz's haunting is more important than my timpani.
Mum and I had a running discussion about the middle class nature of the audience. (Sorry Julian, but she scoffed at your suggestion that classical music does not mostly cater for the middle band). There was, perhaps, a 2% ethnic minority in the audience... but they were mostly Japanese. Or Latin. Or both, as with our neighbours, who were Brazilian Japanese. And hence far more interested in talking to us than any Brit usually is.
Actually, I have a serious point and not just a prod at Mr Lloyd Webber. Gustavo was brilliant because he changed the energy in what is a huge and difficult to fill space. Very rarely do I applaud like a really mean it (the problem with having studied ritual is that you know one when you see one; not that most people don't know that also), but here I did. He ran on and off the stage at every round, and gave us three encores, one of which no-one knew what it was but it was so smooth and gentle, it sucked you in.
Point I'm trying to get to: that music is never just the sounds. It is the people who make the sounds, but more importantly (for my debate with JLW), the people who listen to them. Surely we chose music we like in part because we like what it is associated with, and who it is associated with. There are aspirations involved, whether they are expressed in the Royal Albert Hall or in Reading, Cambridge or the Isle of Wight. I gather much of my own music taste by osmosis from the people I live with, or am around, and sometimes that's a two way process. If our friends like something we're more likely to like it too. I used to apologise for my failings in this sphere, but now I guess its not that unusual. I'm just worst at it than most.And as some one sitting not very far from me just said of Dudamel, "I bet he has lots of middle class groupies offering themselves up." Indeed.
Kind of returning briefly to the knives, this summarises the story of El Sistema, the inspirational system that has put hundreds of poor/'vulnerable' children through Venezualan orchestras, of which the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuala is one. Gustavo is but a part, and not the instigator, though he serves as a good ambassador. Almost just because it was amusing to do so, this April I purchased 4 tickets for a concert they are giving next April. It looks like it's going to be fun. Classical music could do with more shell suits, if only because they shock the middle classes.
Monday, August 11, 2008
coup
I've just achieved a minor coup, without even trying. I've been invited to a meeting at 8.30am with a Colonel, a meeting that I would never have dared to ask for but which fits marvellously into my personal campaign for a culturally competent institution... and it means hardly a thing to anyone else.
That's the thing with personal coups, no-one else really gets them. In some ways it makes them more impressive to oneself, but they lose so much in the telling and the blank faces that it's just a little frustrating.
That's the thing with personal coups, no-one else really gets them. In some ways it makes them more impressive to oneself, but they lose so much in the telling and the blank faces that it's just a little frustrating.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Proms and knives
Time Out this week has an article about the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, on the players' origins in ganglands and violent slums, and the UK Government's new scheme, 'In Harmony', to replicate the model here. Time Out is helping out by calling for donations of unwanted instruments, as part of its campaign to End Knife Crime. And In Harmony is being headed up by Julian Lloyd Webber.
Hmm.
I think they have slightly missed the point. I'm not sure that 'children from England's poorest estates' being given instruments by the Government is quite going to work. I've been looking recently at ways in which socities change, and how initiatives that evolve from the ground, the 'grassroots', have more efficacy than those opposed from above. Not rocket science - NGOs tell us that all the time. What is most interesting is that in some cases the people who have the answers or capacity to bring about change are the people that the Powers That Be are least likely to want to want to engage with. Or, that if the Powers That Be do try to engage they may taint the very initiatives that they want to support, because the latter are successful partly because they are an opposing voice to those Powers. I don't really understand the phrase 'speak truth to power' but that might be something of it. Point being, that the Government giving instruments to the UK's ganglands' children might be counter-productive, as it is the Powers trying to control the people who are using violence to show that they don't want to be controlled by the Powers.
Perhaps I'm too much of a cynic. I certainly don't have the answer, and I'm not all that convinced that the answers I sometimes espouse, like last year's Tools for a London without violence?, are scalable or necessarily effective. I still refuse to believe (accept?!) that violence is inevitable and part of 'human nature'.
Perhaps also I am misunderstanding the roots of this violence, the gun and knife crime epidemic which we are being told we have. The In Harmony message, as I read it, is that knife crime comes from poverty and a lack of things to do and groups to be with. Or, as Time Out puts it, a lack of options to enable them to 'communicate with discipline, passion and a sense of ambition'. I fear we are just trying to make everyone middle class.
I'm due to see the SBYOoV's Gustavo Dudamel conduct at the Proms on Wednesday with mum. I guarantee that the audience will be at least 99% white and probably at least 98% middle class. And someone else will get stabbed or shot in south London within a month.
Hmm.
I think they have slightly missed the point. I'm not sure that 'children from England's poorest estates' being given instruments by the Government is quite going to work. I've been looking recently at ways in which socities change, and how initiatives that evolve from the ground, the 'grassroots', have more efficacy than those opposed from above. Not rocket science - NGOs tell us that all the time. What is most interesting is that in some cases the people who have the answers or capacity to bring about change are the people that the Powers That Be are least likely to want to want to engage with. Or, that if the Powers That Be do try to engage they may taint the very initiatives that they want to support, because the latter are successful partly because they are an opposing voice to those Powers. I don't really understand the phrase 'speak truth to power' but that might be something of it. Point being, that the Government giving instruments to the UK's ganglands' children might be counter-productive, as it is the Powers trying to control the people who are using violence to show that they don't want to be controlled by the Powers.
Perhaps I'm too much of a cynic. I certainly don't have the answer, and I'm not all that convinced that the answers I sometimes espouse, like last year's Tools for a London without violence?, are scalable or necessarily effective. I still refuse to believe (accept?!) that violence is inevitable and part of 'human nature'.
Perhaps also I am misunderstanding the roots of this violence, the gun and knife crime epidemic which we are being told we have. The In Harmony message, as I read it, is that knife crime comes from poverty and a lack of things to do and groups to be with. Or, as Time Out puts it, a lack of options to enable them to 'communicate with discipline, passion and a sense of ambition'. I fear we are just trying to make everyone middle class.
I'm due to see the SBYOoV's Gustavo Dudamel conduct at the Proms on Wednesday with mum. I guarantee that the audience will be at least 99% white and probably at least 98% middle class. And someone else will get stabbed or shot in south London within a month.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
ducks and warmongers
Towards the end of a meeting a couple of weeks ago, my colleague said that he had another question for me, then reached into his back and pulled out a rubber duck. My immediate thought was, 'How does he know I have a row of rubber ducks on my bathroom window?'. 
My second, correct, thought - and it's intriguing how quickly this came to me - was that he had seen this, the tools I have used in the past to run workshops on non-violence, one of which is a rubber duck. (Funny how my memory plays with me. I thought the post in question was this one, my first AVP workshop in Aceh and the first time I really thought that peace education could work).
So a colleague has found my blog. That shouldn't really surprise me. What did surprise me was him going on to say that he had always felt a thread of discomfort about his work, because he wasn't sure that violence was the answer. (I'm paraphrasing, partly because the surprise means that I don't actually remember the words). It was a fascinating and enlightening conversation, not least because it reminded me of the humans inside uniforms - something, despite all my talk, it took me several months to get to grips with.
It also reminded me of a number of conversations with people whose CVs are not blackened like mine, but who don't think that violence is necessarily problematic. Once, in a queue for the Proms, discussing just this question of whether violence was ever necessary, an activist friend said to me that she didn't believe in extremes. I thought it was an excellent answer, and have come back to it several times. But waking this morning it struck me: why is thinking that killing people is never a good idea an extreme position to hold? Even friends who went through the Turning the Tide facilitation course with me last year laughed when I hung 'people kill other people' on our issue washing line as 'my issue'.
The chair of my panel at an anthropology conference recently started the questions after my paper with a complicated one about problematising and politicising the term 'culture', but added that 'pacifists usually get other people to do their violence for them'. Of all the critiques I faced at that conference, most of them predictable, that was the one that hurt, because it questioned my morality, my honesty and my self-awareness. Which, given that being and knowing I am a pacifist/peacenik is the only way I can justify my job to myself, was harsh. In some senses it was a cheap dig from someone who had ethical issues with my choice of career, but on another level it was a fundamental and possible deliberate misunderstanding of my 'extreme' position against violence.
I was out last night for drinks with colleagues as two are leaving us. They're a fun bunch of people, most of them younger than me which occupies me for reasons I don't understand (possibly because, apart from with my siblings, this is one of the few contexts I've been in where I'm one of the oldest). They're smart, too, which is brilliant. One told me that I was a 'prickly anthropologist', rather tempering that by saying that all the anthropologist she has met are prickly and that she loves them all. It was an interesting unguarded insight into how I am seen; I expect to be seen as odd, and I know I have strong opinions... I did rather disturb a team meeting by protesting at being offered what I called 'another warmonger' for the project I am managing! Though I was also called a 'wus' for feeling ready to cry at the planes close overhead a few weeks ago - I think again another misunderstanding of my 'extreme' position: I was not scared for me but for their recipients.
I fear this is a bit long and rambling; I'm out of practice. I had a complaint recently that there was nothing interesting on my blog, with a suggestion that even an allotment update would be better than nothing. (Actually, now I think about it, Karen's complaint is a bit ripe given she has stopped posting all together ;o) So here you go. This is last weekend's harvest, which had me stewing, blanching and wondering what to do with the rest. Five courgettes made it into the office, not quite the usual sweets on the occasion of birthdays or holidays. (How have we in this country managed to create a culture where it is normal for people to bring in gifts to the office to celebrate their own events?! It's a bit odd, but probably fits with Kate Fox's rules for being English, if I think about it hard enough. Which I'm not really in a state to do right now). Someone did ask me whether I live in the Garden of Eden; recent events in Costcutter on Walworth Road prove that I do not.
So, anyway, here's the allotment update in pictures, which notably just look like a bunch of green things unless you're standing at the gate to my patch, when they look marvellously verdant. And here's a promise to myself, and Karen, and the two separate colleagues who kindly encouraged me, to try to post here more often. I'm finding figuring out how to write about my thoughts when I can't write about the stimuli far more difficult than I thought it would be (which makes me wonder whether I wasn't too lax when writing about Aceh), but since I claim to like challenges, I ought to try harder to rise to this one.
My second, correct, thought - and it's intriguing how quickly this came to me - was that he had seen this, the tools I have used in the past to run workshops on non-violence, one of which is a rubber duck. (Funny how my memory plays with me. I thought the post in question was this one, my first AVP workshop in Aceh and the first time I really thought that peace education could work).So a colleague has found my blog. That shouldn't really surprise me. What did surprise me was him going on to say that he had always felt a thread of discomfort about his work, because he wasn't sure that violence was the answer. (I'm paraphrasing, partly because the surprise means that I don't actually remember the words). It was a fascinating and enlightening conversation, not least because it reminded me of the humans inside uniforms - something, despite all my talk, it took me several months to get to grips with.
It also reminded me of a number of conversations with people whose CVs are not blackened like mine, but who don't think that violence is necessarily problematic. Once, in a queue for the Proms, discussing just this question of whether violence was ever necessary, an activist friend said to me that she didn't believe in extremes. I thought it was an excellent answer, and have come back to it several times. But waking this morning it struck me: why is thinking that killing people is never a good idea an extreme position to hold? Even friends who went through the Turning the Tide facilitation course with me last year laughed when I hung 'people kill other people' on our issue washing line as 'my issue'.
The chair of my panel at an anthropology conference recently started the questions after my paper with a complicated one about problematising and politicising the term 'culture', but added that 'pacifists usually get other people to do their violence for them'. Of all the critiques I faced at that conference, most of them predictable, that was the one that hurt, because it questioned my morality, my honesty and my self-awareness. Which, given that being and knowing I am a pacifist/peacenik is the only way I can justify my job to myself, was harsh. In some senses it was a cheap dig from someone who had ethical issues with my choice of career, but on another level it was a fundamental and possible deliberate misunderstanding of my 'extreme' position against violence.
I was out last night for drinks with colleagues as two are leaving us. They're a fun bunch of people, most of them younger than me which occupies me for reasons I don't understand (possibly because, apart from with my siblings, this is one of the few contexts I've been in where I'm one of the oldest). They're smart, too, which is brilliant. One told me that I was a 'prickly anthropologist', rather tempering that by saying that all the anthropologist she has met are prickly and that she loves them all. It was an interesting unguarded insight into how I am seen; I expect to be seen as odd, and I know I have strong opinions... I did rather disturb a team meeting by protesting at being offered what I called 'another warmonger' for the project I am managing! Though I was also called a 'wus' for feeling ready to cry at the planes close overhead a few weeks ago - I think again another misunderstanding of my 'extreme' position: I was not scared for me but for their recipients.
I fear this is a bit long and rambling; I'm out of practice. I had a complaint recently that there was nothing interesting on my blog, with a suggestion that even an allotment update would be better than nothing. (Actually, now I think about it, Karen's complaint is a bit ripe given she has stopped posting all together ;o) So here you go. This is last weekend's harvest, which had me stewing, blanching and wondering what to do with the rest. Five courgettes made it into the office, not quite the usual sweets on the occasion of birthdays or holidays. (How have we in this country managed to create a culture where it is normal for people to bring in gifts to the office to celebrate their own events?! It's a bit odd, but probably fits with Kate Fox's rules for being English, if I think about it hard enough. Which I'm not really in a state to do right now). Someone did ask me whether I live in the Garden of Eden; recent events in Costcutter on Walworth Road prove that I do not.
So, anyway, here's the allotment update in pictures, which notably just look like a bunch of green things unless you're standing at the gate to my patch, when they look marvellously verdant. And here's a promise to myself, and Karen, and the two separate colleagues who kindly encouraged me, to try to post here more often. I'm finding figuring out how to write about my thoughts when I can't write about the stimuli far more difficult than I thought it would be (which makes me wonder whether I wasn't too lax when writing about Aceh), but since I claim to like challenges, I ought to try harder to rise to this one.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Negotiating with the enemy
Recent press release from the HD centre (which I know as the organisation that tried and failed to negotiate over the Aceh conflict several years ago, though they have had other successes). Makes the point I keep banging on about: it's better to talk to people.
“The idea of talking to your enemies is something that has been lost in the rush to proscribe armed groups as terrorists.”
Many, probably most, perhaps all of the 100 peacemakers, including senior United Nations and government officials, who heard Martin Griffiths, Director of the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), pronounce these words recently at the Oslo Forum, agreed with them. Indeed, another participant described the failure to speak with Hamas in Palestine “a missed opportunity” and added “this might require updating our mental maps."
The controversial question of whether the United States should sit down around the same table and talk to Iran was foremost in the minds of the 100 conflict resolvers. It was clear from the tone of the Forum that opinion ran directly against the current in Washington today, but perhaps not tomorrow.
As Martin Griffiths put it earlier, “the notion of a terrorist is notoriously subjective. Overwhelmingly, the negotiators felt that isolating, ignoring the terrorists has never been an effective way to end a conflict or violence. We don’t feel that we are giving credibility to terrorists by talking to them. We are in favour of talking with anyone if it means it can end the conflict.”
It could be said that today’s “terrorist” will be tomorrow’s international hero. The example of Nelson Mandela, once labelled a terrorist, today an icon, illustrates the point.
If “military action remains an option on the negotiating table,” as is said so often in Washington, a more peaceful tone was struck in a keynote address by Mohammad Khatami, former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
”The West must look at the East not as a subject matter that needs to be known so that the goal of economic and political hegemony can be achieved, but also as a partner to the West in an interconnected world where the security of each depends upon the security of everyone else. The East must also rest assured that in order to achieve progress and development and independence, it will find the support of the world,” Khatami said.
“The historical mindsets that exist in the different parts of the world, including the education system, need to change. What existed as a basis for the relationships between countries and nations over decades was violence and hegemony and the result of that was two ruinous world wars and the cold war and occupation and suppression of nations and the imposition of double standards and finally the dangerous phenomenon of terrorism which has manifested itself more harshly and destructively than ever.”
The former leader of Iran said in conclusion, “the East can benefit from the culture and civilization of the West for its own development and its progress and its freedom.”
“The idea of talking to your enemies is something that has been lost in the rush to proscribe armed groups as terrorists.”
Many, probably most, perhaps all of the 100 peacemakers, including senior United Nations and government officials, who heard Martin Griffiths, Director of the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), pronounce these words recently at the Oslo Forum, agreed with them. Indeed, another participant described the failure to speak with Hamas in Palestine “a missed opportunity” and added “this might require updating our mental maps."
The controversial question of whether the United States should sit down around the same table and talk to Iran was foremost in the minds of the 100 conflict resolvers. It was clear from the tone of the Forum that opinion ran directly against the current in Washington today, but perhaps not tomorrow.
As Martin Griffiths put it earlier, “the notion of a terrorist is notoriously subjective. Overwhelmingly, the negotiators felt that isolating, ignoring the terrorists has never been an effective way to end a conflict or violence. We don’t feel that we are giving credibility to terrorists by talking to them. We are in favour of talking with anyone if it means it can end the conflict.”
It could be said that today’s “terrorist” will be tomorrow’s international hero. The example of Nelson Mandela, once labelled a terrorist, today an icon, illustrates the point.
If “military action remains an option on the negotiating table,” as is said so often in Washington, a more peaceful tone was struck in a keynote address by Mohammad Khatami, former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
”The West must look at the East not as a subject matter that needs to be known so that the goal of economic and political hegemony can be achieved, but also as a partner to the West in an interconnected world where the security of each depends upon the security of everyone else. The East must also rest assured that in order to achieve progress and development and independence, it will find the support of the world,” Khatami said.
“The historical mindsets that exist in the different parts of the world, including the education system, need to change. What existed as a basis for the relationships between countries and nations over decades was violence and hegemony and the result of that was two ruinous world wars and the cold war and occupation and suppression of nations and the imposition of double standards and finally the dangerous phenomenon of terrorism which has manifested itself more harshly and destructively than ever.”
The former leader of Iran said in conclusion, “the East can benefit from the culture and civilization of the West for its own development and its progress and its freedom.”
Friday, June 06, 2008
cheese for peace
Okay, I thought it was nuts when I read the strapline. But this seems an innovative economic way of getting around long-term conflict-driven border controls. And the political hostility between Armenians and Turks is something I heard even in a tiny village in southern Russia. So eat that cheese.
International Alert’s Turkish and Armenian partners jointly launch a new cheese brand aimed at encouraging economic ties across the South Caucasus region. The unveiling of the “Caucasian Cheese” took place on 14th May during The First Caucasian Cheese Exhibition in the city of Gyumri, Armenia. The cheese will be produced and sold in both countries.
Turkey and Armenia are countries with no diplomatic ties and a closed border. Consequently trade between the two has flown either north through Georgia, or south through Iran. The joint cheese production is meant to promote cooperation between the two countries, and also across the whole South Caucasus region.
The cooperation is one of multiple initiatives facilitated by the Caucasus Business and Development Network (CBDN), an organisation established and supported by Alert. CBDN offers local entrepreneurs ways to connect and cooperate. It provides advice and information on regional business opportunities, organises business forums and conferences, facilitates business deals and holds training sessions for local entrepreneurs.
Alert’s role is to support people involved in the network. We work with local businesses and professional associations that come from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, as well as the unrecognised entities of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorny Karabakh.
Previous CBDN and Alert initiatives have included a Regional Tourism Operators’ Forum and the first ever South Caucasian Women’s Economic Forum. Recently Alert initiated joint honey production and agricultural machinery lending schemes in the South Ossetian conflict zone, and organised a fruit juice production scheme in the Georgian-populated eastern Abkhazia for the western Abkhaz tourism market.
Monday, May 26, 2008
don't forget meg. or peg.
For some reason you keep coming back (and you can't all be my mother). And this despite my dismal failure at posting much in the last 6 months. I'd like to say it's because I got a life, but it isn't. I got a job.
Today I came back because I remembered that blog I discovered months ago, and couldn't remember her name or site. If you like me and want a random wander through the internet, look at Meg Pickard's site. She has excellent photos on flickr too.
And she has a cat. As do I. Peg's brood started to explore today, just in time for my painters to arrive for two weeks tomorrow. Great. They are fascinating though. It's strange to realise when you see kittens sit up for the first time that they haven't been sitting up for the last 3 weeks. And how could you live somewhere as exciting as my kitchen and not want to explore?
I promise that in about 7 weeks the kittens will be gone and I'll find something else to ramble on about. Or I'll just stop posting again.
Today I came back because I remembered that blog I discovered months ago, and couldn't remember her name or site. If you like me and want a random wander through the internet, look at Meg Pickard's site. She has excellent photos on flickr too.
And she has a cat. As do I. Peg's brood started to explore today, just in time for my painters to arrive for two weeks tomorrow. Great. They are fascinating though. It's strange to realise when you see kittens sit up for the first time that they haven't been sitting up for the last 3 weeks. And how could you live somewhere as exciting as my kitchen and not want to explore?
I promise that in about 7 weeks the kittens will be gone and I'll find something else to ramble on about. Or I'll just stop posting again.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
anthropology to an engineer
I had a meeting with the head of my Group the other week, set up because I was trying to get approval to attend some conferences. He rightly turned the meeting on its head, and put me on the spot – as he put it – by asking me to explain, what is anthropology and why is it important?
I’m still working on that question. Month by month I get closer to an English-language response, but the final version is still a long way off (and is a topic worthy of a PhD dissertation, I’ve no doubt).
One problem, I realise, is that while I might find elegant descriptions or definitions, they are almost always self-referential, in that one has to understand the language of anthropology in order to understand the meaning of the sentences. Take this, from Rosen’s book on organizational ethnography, for example:
“The aim of social constructionist research is then to understand how members of a social group, through their participation in social process, enact their particular realities and endow them with meaning” (2000, p. 47).
Neat, and it encapsulates things that my descriptions have been missing. But quite apart from needing to ‘get’ what ‘social constructionist’ means (which I don’t, yet, fully understand), ‘participation in social process’, ‘enact their particular realities’ and ‘endow them with meaning’ are all ‘slippery’ phrases, as we put it in CEF (needing an alternative, non-culturally specific term for ‘weasel words’). You need to know the meaning before they make sense.
Which doesn’t really help explain to an engineer why he should care about anthropology.
I’m still working on that question. Month by month I get closer to an English-language response, but the final version is still a long way off (and is a topic worthy of a PhD dissertation, I’ve no doubt).
One problem, I realise, is that while I might find elegant descriptions or definitions, they are almost always self-referential, in that one has to understand the language of anthropology in order to understand the meaning of the sentences. Take this, from Rosen’s book on organizational ethnography, for example:
“The aim of social constructionist research is then to understand how members of a social group, through their participation in social process, enact their particular realities and endow them with meaning” (2000, p. 47).
Neat, and it encapsulates things that my descriptions have been missing. But quite apart from needing to ‘get’ what ‘social constructionist’ means (which I don’t, yet, fully understand), ‘participation in social process’, ‘enact their particular realities’ and ‘endow them with meaning’ are all ‘slippery’ phrases, as we put it in CEF (needing an alternative, non-culturally specific term for ‘weasel words’). You need to know the meaning before they make sense.
Which doesn’t really help explain to an engineer why he should care about anthropology.
:o)
Reasons for optimism... I haven't read such interesting research findings for months. Violence is appparently on the decline. "Challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing, the Human Security Brief 2007 reveals a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.
Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, while the loose-knit terror network associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.
The Brief also describes and analyses the extraordinary, but largely unnoticed, positive change in sub-Saharan Africa's security landscape. The number of conflicts being waged in the region more than halved between 1999 and 2006; the combat toll dropped by 98 percent.
Finally, the Brief updates the findings of the 2005 Human Security Report, and demonstrates that the decline in the total number of armed conflicts and combat deaths around the world has continued. The number of military coups has also continued decline, as have the number of campaigns of deadly violence waged against civilians."
Monday, May 19, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
Peggie did us proud
Having failed to get my cat 'done' on time, about five weeks ago I paid £25 for the priviledge of being told that yes, she is pregnant. The fluffly black tom from across the road had had his merry way with our Peggie on our kitchen floor, and this was the result.
So yesterday, perfectly timed, Peggie provided us with an additional five residents of Aylesbury Road. She did a fine job; a bit of a wail before each popped out but she did an excellent clean-up job, and for a cat of only 10 months herself (I know, teenage pregnancies on the rise...) she is an incredibly patient, maternal feline.
I'm particularly impressed that from a litter of five she produced three tortoiseshell (always a good seller!), one ginger and only one black and white (like its pa). It's not all cuteness though; it was clearly bloody hard work. Here she is with three out, clearly one more to go (and in fact another one after that - explaining why she looked like she had swallowed a football for the last couple of weeks.)
Anyone looking for a kitten then?! They should be ready for new homes in early July...
So yesterday, perfectly timed, Peggie provided us with an additional five residents of Aylesbury Road. She did a fine job; a bit of a wail before each popped out but she did an excellent clean-up job, and for a cat of only 10 months herself (I know, teenage pregnancies on the rise...) she is an incredibly patient, maternal feline.
I'm particularly impressed that from a litter of five she produced three tortoiseshell (always a good seller!), one ginger and only one black and white (like its pa). It's not all cuteness though; it was clearly bloody hard work. Here she is with three out, clearly one more to go (and in fact another one after that - explaining why she looked like she had swallowed a football for the last couple of weeks.)
Anyone looking for a kitten then?! They should be ready for new homes in early July...
Monday, April 21, 2008
PBI on the BBC World Service
PBI UK has launched a new fund to raise money for supporting human rights defenders - ie to do the work PBI does. For the launch, a Colombia lawyer has come to the UK, and she and a PBI volunteer were featured on the BBC World Service's Outlook programme last Thursday, 17 April. Catch it quick, as it will be updated to the new programme on Thursday.
And then give PBI some money. Ta.
And then give PBI some money. Ta.
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