Panchromatica

20 (ish) things I’m longing to do in 2008

Having been fingered for this by Brenda I was going to let it pass me by, being allergic to good intentions these days. However, on reflection it seems:

1. a good way to fill a blog post, and less cynically
2. a genuinely useful way to ruminate on one’s lot in life.

New Year resolutions are of course doomed to failure. Producing a list of 20 (or 19 or whatever) things to do seems to be somehow much more realistic in that such a list can only be broad brush. This is already sounding a lot more pretentious than Brenda’s idea so without further preamble:

    1. Write more and keep focussed. In the past four years I have started two novels (both for NaNoWriMo) but because I let my attention drift in both cases they never got finished. (OK the first is probably crap too, but that never stopped some people)

    2. Blog more. I’ve separated this from 2 above but obviously they are both complementary and conflicting. I seem to be incapable of writing even a three line blog post without revising and refining it, so even minimal blogging takes away from more formal writing.

    3. I’m developing an interest in what I think of as ‘practical anarchism’ and I need to develop these ideas further – in other words we can’t get rid of the bastards, but we can still make their life hell… (see also 1 and 2 above!)

    4. Get to grips with my Bronica camera. In particular this will mean getting better at using a light meter, which has never been my strong point.

    5. Paint. The desire to paint has resurfaced recently, perhaps prodded back into existence by my digital work.  I haven’t really worked out if this is a sub-conscious feeling that digital art isn’t really art, a genuine artistic upswelling, or if it stems from my inability to do anything properly with getting diverted to something else after a couple of months

    6. Get out more. For a variety of reasons that hasn’t been an option over the last 2-3 years, but both photography and painting demand it.

    7. Get more business like about selling. I’m actually not too bad at the selling once I get to something like a craft fair, but I need to take a much more hard headed look at where and how I sell. I’m certainly not going to go back to being a wage slave – the very idea makes me feel ill – so selling my pictures or other craft work like jewellery is the only option, unless someone takes up my novel to make a block buster film.

    8. Keep learning. Like most people I have huge gaps in my knowledge and at my age only having a goal in mind will give me any chance of filling even some of them in any systematic way. Until I was 61 for example I had never read Jane Austen. That gap has now been filled by one of her books. I probably won’t be reading another, but now that is from choice, not ignorance… 

        As an example of my present scattergun approach, the books on my current reading pile include:

• Anarchy, State and Utopia – Robert Nozick
• A Glastonbury Romance – John Cowper Powis
• Just and Unjust Wars – Michael Walzer
• Cash – Johnny Cash
• What are Old People For? – William H Thomas (Recommended by Ronni Bennett)
• The Compass Rose – Ursula K LeGuin
• The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
• Poetics of Space – Gaston Bachelard

    9. Get angry. I’m retired and beholden to no one. The first time I saw the clip (below) I thought it was hilarious, but now it brings tears to my eyes, because we have taken it – time and again we have taken it and we are still taking it. So the new strap line will be:

From Jo Grimond to Leon Trotsky

As a naïve schoolboy, like many others, I became caught up in Trotskyist politics. I was never a ‘good comrade’ being as likely to read Jo Grimond or Bakunin as Marx and Trotsky but for a while the excitement of being involved in clandestine politics (or so I fondly believed!) was enough. My mother always said I would ‘read a toffee paper’ so stopping me reading anything was always going to be difficult. I’m not sure I knew exactly what being a Trot meant (as I suspect did many others involved with me) but somewhere in it I was sure was the utopian idea of a better world. My involvement lasted at most about two years and ceased when I went to University. I think by then the endless factionalism had become simply too wearying so the physical move provided a convenient excuse.

Because I read ‘outside the doctrine’ I found of course much contradiction in what I read. At 18 finding ways to reconciling Grimond and Trotsky was perhaps too much to expect. What always appealed to me though was the idea of taking responsibility and control of one’s life – something for which I suspect Jo Grimond had more sympathy than Trotsky. This is why for me the attraction of Libertarianism is not in rampant individualism. We do not live in isolation and our every action places us in some relationship with others, requiring us to find some way to mediate those relationships. We do so by recognising that our individual actions will have cumulative, collective consequences and that ignoring those consequences is likely to place our relationships in a mode of conflict. Taking responsibility for one’s own actions is thus, pace Rand, a long way from ignoring the consequences of those actions on others.

Being 60

I was 60 on Saturday. I was going to write something to mark the event but realised I had already done so with my guest post at Time Goes By.

This year I cross one of those artificial age thresholds we so love to hate – in my case I will be 60. When my parents approached that age, they probably did so with some trepidation – both physically and mentally it was seen as the beginning of the decline. That isn’t the case now because of course we expect to live much longer as medical treatment improves.

One thing that hasn’t changed however is our attitude to aging or retirement. Many of us, supported it must be said by trades unions and the media, see retirement not as a change but as the end - as if we define ourselves by our work. Indeed the pensions system makes it pretty much impossible to do anything else. If my working life had been like my father’s – hot, hard labour in a foundry – I suppose I might have felt that way myself, but increasingly this will not be so.

Part of the reason for linking to this rather than the new piece I was writing is that I haven't finished - I found myself going in new directions, much more personal than I feel comfortable with, and I want to take some time to think further before committing them to the ether...

I am never, NEVER, moving house again...

As you will see I haven’t been blogging for a while. This hasn’t been for want of trying, but for reasons I still haven’t managed to fathom out, it has taken almost 6 weeks to get a workable Internet connection. Part of the problem appears to be that AOL, the company I was using for a temporary dial up connection, appeared to be swallowing messages from PIPEX, my broadband provider. They weren’t in the Spam folder, they just were not arriving at all. As a consequence I may be paying for two connections – I’m not sure because those messages have vanished into the ether too.

By the time I had a phone line up and running – which took almost two weeks – the back log of e-mails was such that it wasn’t worth attempting to read them via a very slow dial up connection. I’m over 7km from the exchange so even my broadband is slow by comparison to my old house and dial up is almost unworkable.

I finally got everything working today, signing on to at least 3000 e-mails, of which I estimate well over 95% are junk, despite filters. This overwhelmed Thunderbird causing all sorts of complications that have still not been fully resolved. Not least of these is that many messages have been downloaded several times because of corrupted inboxes.

I’ve given up trying to read everything, so if you have sent me a message recently and haven’t had a reply my apologies, but it is probably best to send it again.

Guest Post - Ronni Benett

Other things being equal - but when was that ever so - I should be moving house today. I've asked a few people to cover the gap with guest posts. Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By has herself recently moved, so it seems appropriate that her post on the effects of that move should appear today.

When Ian asked me to guest blog for him during his move to a new home, I couldn’t help but think about my own recent move undertaken when the costs associated with living in New York City became, for a variety of reasons, no longer tenable.

It was a hard decision to make – to leave New York City, my home of 37 years, and to give up my 200-year-old Greenwich Village apartment of 23 years. I’d made a vow when I bought the place in 1983, that they would take me out feet first; I’d done all the moving I was ever going to do in my life.

Even two decades younger than I am now, I should have known better than to make such an absolutist pronouncement; life quite commonly makes fools of those who do.

Once I contained my rage at being forced out of the city I had dreamed of living in from childhood, I wondered how well I would adapt, at age 65, to an entirely new place - a small town of 62,000 compared to New York’s eight million, and one about which I had only the slightest knowledge.

I’ve been arguing against ageist myths since I began my blog more than two years ago. Now I would find out if I am as adaptable to new circumstances as I’ve been claiming elders, contrary to those myths, are.

As I write this, having been in Portland, Maine, now for four-and-a-half weeks, I can report that it suits me well – home and city – and what small glitches there are to settling in are only the time lag in learning new methods of recycling, heating, shopping, banking, etc. that were second nature in New York. Hardly a stretch to manage.

Aside from friends I saw frequently, I haven’t missed New York yet. Already, that old line about living in Manhattan (“All New Yorkers believe that people who live anywhere else are, in some sense, kidding.”) has begun to sound a tad more self-admiring than I’m comfortable with from this distance.

Don’t get me wrong; I loved my 37 years in the Big Apple. I’m just less convinced now that the superiority New Yorkers feel their residency accords them (of which I have been guilty) is deserved. On the other hand, I hold my tongue and try not to show my irritation every time a new Maine acquaintance impugns my former city, which happens more frequently than I would have supposed.

Until I became accustomed to it, Portland felt like a ghost town to me compared to New York’s excessive crowding. There are so few people in the streets of the business section at lunch time, it is easy to imagine a neutron bomb has been detonated.

Now, after only a month, I relish the ease of walking down the street without being smacked into by pedestrians lost in musical iPod reveries or cell phone conversations paying no mind to having bruised my leg with their briefcases or smashed the side of my head with their backpacks - not uncommon occurrences in New York. Street life is more civilized, I know now, when there is less of it.

There is little sense of bustle and hurry here and although I will forever defend the friendliness of New Yorkers, it is of a different sort. Portlanders are more likely to leisurely pass the time of day. The bank teller already knows my name. The guy who mans my favorite vegetable stand at the weekly farmer’s market recognizes me now. The lady behind the counter where I buy my newspaper has begun to greet me like a long-time customer.

There is no hurry in these transactions as there is in New York where a conversation can be continued in short bursts over several days without either party missing a beat. Each way of doing it, I think, has its virtues and drawbacks.

It took no more than a day to adapt to the quiet in my new neighborhood. Horn honking - without which no vehicle can travel more than 50 feet in New York City 24/7 - is almost unknown here. I have yet to wake during the night in my new bedroom and that hadn’t happened in New York in at least a decade.

The most difficult change is the necessity to drive somewhere even for the most minor requirements of life. In New York, food – and pretty much anything else – is no more than half a block or even only a phone call away. In Portland, if I need a quart of milk or have run out of bathroom tissue, it’s not just a quick run to the corner - it’s a drive of 15 to 30 minutes depending on the item.

At those times, I long for the guys at my corner deli in New York, but I’ll just have to do a better job than I have so far of keeping a running list of items I need. It is, after all, how most of the people in the United States live. Give me another couple of weeks and I think I’ll work it out.

If that’s the biggest problem in my move – and it is – adapting, even at 65, is obviously not an issue. It’s been so easy and so pleasant a change in daily life that it has crossed my mind a couple of times that I should have done this years go. Interesting thought, but I have no patience for regrets. I’m here now, happy in my new home and I wish Ian as easy a transition to his new life.

Ronni's experience seems to mirror that of many people (including me) that life in smaller towns and cities has much to offer and they are not the cultural desert denizens of places like London and New York would have us believe. You might want to look at the Cool Town Studios blog, devoted to just this point.

On the move...

Like Ronni Bennett, I am on the move. At the moment we are in that limbo known only to housebuyers in England and Wales as waiting for the exchange of contracts. Once we have got through that stage we can relax a little, but of course all the other problems of packing, disposing of unwanted stuff still remain. Also like Ronni, we are downsizing - not particularly in the house, but in the location. Ronni has moved from New York to Maine, I'm moving from a small town of some 20,000 to a village of some 600 if that (although only a mile or so from another market town.) Even so it will be a big shake up for someone born not that far from the Coaly Tyne. It is this impending move that led me to take so many photographs of my garden, which I will definitely miss - at least until I have got the new one (currently just a lawn) into shape. I wasn't blogging when I made this one, so I hope to document progress here and/or on Flickr

From my garden, originally uploaded by ibanda.

It also means that for a few weeks blogging, which has already been erratic because of illness, will continue to be sparse.

1-2-3

As you will see looking at the sidebar, I have a flickr account. When I stopped being a wage slave and became self employed one of the things I promised myself was to take some time out to get back to photography. That got me via restoration of some decaying slides into the work that you can see on flickr. I have now started up a web site to sell some of these images. I also aim to do commissions transforming clients work in the  same way.

If that wasn't enough I have started making jewellery - nothing grand here, just fun stuff. In the UK we call it costume jewellery, but the term may vary. I'm aiming to sell that and a few other craft items via Etsy, where you can see several others but one example is up on my flickr account.

The significance of the post title by the way comes from a comment by one of my flickr friends to the effect that you do your third career for love. Taking pictures and making jewellery is certainly more fun than sitting in committee meetings...

Another hiatus

Blogging is going to get even thinner over the next week, as I'm helping a relative to move. Good practice for my own potential move perhaps...

Should I stay or should I go...

For various reasons we've been looking at the possibility of moving home. This isn't something I expected to do at my age (coming up to 60 next year) but things change. Although I have lived in my present town since 1990 I have no huge emotional attachment to it. I have friends of course but I have friends across the UK and thanks to blogging, across the planet. I wasn't born here and have no childhood memories of the place, which are to me a huge part of that sense of belonging to a locality.

It was slightly strange therefore to find that Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By is facing up to a similar challenge. She has now set up a new companion blog called A Sense of Place in which she intends to chronicle her search for a new place to live away from her beloved Greenwich Village.

One post struck a particular chord with me as she described the way in which the anticipation of that new life in a place as yet unknown is likely to drive her on - despite an unexpected opportunity to stay in New York.

I suspect the emotional momentum on my new adventure is already far enough along that there is no going back.

Like Ronni, if we do move we have no especial commitment to an area - there may be financial reasons for a particular choice but no emotional ones. So researching potential locations has created that same anticipation as possibilities emerge that we would never have thought about had the move not been more or less forced on us.

I say forced, but of course this is not a job move and so the option are much wider. We could move back to my (or my wife's) home town, but "You can dream about it every now and then, but you can't go home again". So we are being as rational as we can. We would like to live near the sea, we both prefer the east coast to the west, we want a reasonable level of facilities nearby such as hospitals, shops etc. The filtering process goes on but one area seems to keep popping up - not only affordable but cheap enough that I might be able to fulfil one of my life dreams and plant a wood. So the  process of investigation, of assessing options, begins to develop its own momentum. The chance of a new start, the chance of a garden without bindweed, even that wood, all make you start to behave as if the deceision has already been taken.

One other factor that makes this process so much easier than it might have been even five years ago is of course the web - estate agents, health facilities, town directories, builders - all available at the click of a mouse.

So - watch this space.

Why does God have all the best tunes?

Arranging a funeral – and the rather morbid realisation that I have more years behind me than ahead – led me into thinking about the way we handle death in our society.

Only about 7% of us attend the Anglican Church with any frequency and only about 16% attend any Christian church.

In the UK, Church membership and attendance are declining relatively rapidly. Church membership figures for the UK show 6.7 million church members in 1990, 17.3% of the Christian population, with 4.4 million church attenders. In 1995, the number of church members had declined to 6.4 million (16.8% of the Christian population), with 4.0 million attenders. Projections for the year 2000 give 5.9 million members (15.6% of the Christian population) with 3.8 million attenders. (Source : World Churches Handbook / Christian Research)

More international data on church attendance here

Even so, as far as I can tell the majority of British funerals are religious in character. That may be hedging our bets - although it’s probably too late by then! - but I suspect it is more to do with our need for ritual at times of great emotion.

I’ve never been to a Jewish or Muslim funeral so I can’t speak for what happens there. British Christian funerals are however underpinned by a strong tradition of hymn singing. The effect of that is very different to the same hymns sung by the choir. The funeral I recently attended included one hymn – How great Thou art - with a wonderful tune (and for a believer powerful words) that even as a long-standing atheist still managed to raise the hair on the back of my neck. Add ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘The day Thou gavest’ and you have a strong – and shared - emotional experience.

For the atheist, there is no equivalent. There is obviously powerful and emotional music to draw on, but it will not be shared in the same way as the Christian hymn. Nor is there a shared equivalent to the St James Bible. As a consequence, since most people probably do not plan their funeral in advance, I suspect therefore that when the time comes the relatives settle for the comfort of a familiar ritual.

As you might expect I have my own ideas about music.

West End Blues – Louis Armstrong (if only for the tremendous opening solo)

For all we know - Billie Holiday (because I can’t imagine going anywhere without Billie)

Ode to Joy – from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (going out on a big finish!)

Others on the short list:

Vissi d’arte from Tosca (it passed the neck hair test even though when I first heard it I had no idea of the meaning or the context)

Three from Duke Ellington

Ducky Wucky – (it makes me laugh)
Warm Valley – (warm and sensuous - Duke at his best)
Caravan – (more classic Duke)

My question therefore is this – given a non-religious ceremony, what music and what words would you choose?

If there are enough responses I'll post some form of list.