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…on tradition (or: Merry Christmas!)

Most people have an aversion to change that is strong, bordering on irrational. I remember several years ago my employer changed the width of the border on the left hand of one of our main web pages. I was flabbergasted by the vitriolic hate (e)mail we got from users. I can’t claim to be particularly good at coping with change myself. For example, Andrew and I have acknowledged that our flat is far too small for us for well over a year now, but we’re still there. I just can’t be bother moving twice–once into a bigger rental property, and again into another place when we find a flat to buy.

While I’ve been at home for the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between tradition and change. My family and I are, I suspect, more fond of traditions than most. Some of them are totally mundane. At Georgetown my sister & I used to have the same exchange every time we passed a clothing donation bin on Prospect Street:

Me: “I’ll give you a dollar if you climb into that.”
Sister: “But I’d be trapped in there.”
Me: “But you’d have a dollar.”

Andrew & I have similar traditions. Whenever we pass a particular Domino’s Pizza, one of us suggests “We should get pizza some time.” We’ll never actually get pizza from there, but we say it anyway. In my family, lots of the little traditions help demarcate time. Easter dinner? That’s at Aunt Toni’s house. Thanksgiving? Marguerite’s. Mother’s day and Christmas? Ours. On Christmas Eve, we always eat Kraft spiral Mac & Cheese with home made apple sauce before going to mass.

Other family traditions are more substantial. Every summer, for example, my mother’s family rented the same cabin on Camano Island. They started in 1952, and when the family that owned the cabin decided to stop renting it out in 2010, we bought a bigger house on the same beach. And for 35 years, my mother’s family has gathered every 23rd of December at the chapel in Jesuit House at Gonzaga University for a mass to celebrate our ancestors and our family. As an aside, the chapel itself has a special place in our family. It has been the setting for weddings (including that of my parents), funerals (such as my grandmother’s wake), and countless baptisms.

All of which is to say that we’ll use just about anything as an excuse to create a tradition. I never went through a traditional rebellious phase–I was more subversive than rebellious, I guess–so my adolescence was never marked by any sort of rejection of family traditions. In fact, having grown up mostly with other children of large Catholic families, I’m not sure I was even aware that my family was more “traditional” than most until I was at Georgetown (if not Oxford).

So: Merry Christmas!

Now we are six

Birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday. And since I have neither the ability nor the inclination to avoid available A A Milne references, I offer you this:

When I was one,
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six
now and forever.

Andrew and I are in York fork my birthday. It’s nice to get away from London (especially the madness that consumes London in the last few weekends before Christmas), and we’ve never been to York before. It’s a great little city. Wonderful Christmas market, but the medieval city walls are pretty cool, and there are enough restaurants and tea rooms to keep me happy. My only gripe is that the pubs do seem a bit on the dreadful side. Next time we come up here, we’ll have to do more pub research ahead of time. We’re staying at the Cedar Court Grand hotel, just across the river from the city centre. It was built in the first years of the 20th century as the headquarters of the Great Northeastern Railway, and as such the building itself (and our room) is suitably grand. Last night when we arrived at 10.30 we ordered room service, which turned out to be a great idea. They brought a whole table to our room, laid with white linen and silver and candles. It was definitely the best room service experience I’ve ever had at a hotel.

This weekend marks the end of York’s Early Music Christmas Festival. I’m perfectly happy to admit that I’m a boring old man now, and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend  my birthday than listening to 16th and 17th century Christmas music from Spain. The concert was great, by the way (I particularly enjoyed Riu Riu Chiu). Now we’re in a Costa Coffee hanging out until we can head to York Minster for evensong. One of the great things about my birthday is that it coincides with Human Rights Day: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed on this day in 1948. As a result, evensong tonight will be focused on celebrating human rights, praying for the strength to confront injustice, and giving thanks for those who fight for human dignity. Certainly not a bad way to spend one’s 31st birthday.

I must say that I’m actually pretty happy to be turning 31. Thirty was great, but it carried with it the faint aroma of impropriety; I always felt as if it implied some sort of desperate and futile desire to cling to my twenties. 31: much more respectable.

Too early to say

There’s an apocryphal story according to which Zhou Enlai–China’s premier from 1949-76–was supposedly asked about the effects of the French Revolution. “It’s too early to say”, was his response.

Leaving aside that the exchange didn’t happen, I think it’s a brilliant sentiment. It also seems on the brink of being extremely applicable. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles and one of its main legacies (the Weimar Republic) seem poised to cause the disintegration of the Eurozone and the European Union. While this is undeniably a bad thing (I for one don’t look forward to the zombie invasion bound to follow the collapse). Anyway, the emotional scars of Weimar seem to have left the Germans neurotically afraid of inflation, forcing us all toward something much much worse.

I am slightly comforted by the prospect that it will provide endless fodder for historians of the future. A war born of nationalism whose end was characterized by nationalist demands for reparations drove the world to war within two decades and brought the global economy to its knees 92 years on. Revisionists, eat your hearts out….

Something to which I can aspire…

“More adjusted than most to his own wants and necessities, and so better able to accommodate other people’s, he was an exemplary person to work with.” -Mary-Kay Wilmers on the late Peter Campbell.

Happy Thanksgiving

One of my favourite things about this country has always been that it’s often difficult, based on weather alone, to determine whether it’s December or February or July or September. In previous years, that consistent weather has always been low clouds, heavy drizzle and a permeating chill. This year that characteristic and charming weather has still been with us (our wedding in August, for example), but it has been joined by absolutely amazing sunny weather too. Like today. And that’s pretty great.

Overheard in the office

“I would, but it would be dirty.”

Lately

Things have seemed extraordinarily busy of late. I used to think that December was over once it has started since there were so many things to do. This year, that manic end-of-year rush seems to have expanded to include the whole of the fourth quarter.

Part of the feeling may be a hangover from the wedding: in July and August, I feel like we spent a disproportionate amount of time putting off socializing in anticipation of the wedding (note that I don’t say planning the wedding, since it’s obvious we didn’t spend much time at all doing that). Then we were more or less out of the country for the six weeks that followed, after which point we were well into October.

Nor does it seem likely to let up any time soon. For every week in recent memory, I’ve been trying to squeeze 5 days of work into 2 days of office time. That’s not really sustainable. And yet this week I’m in Brussels today and taking Thursday and Friday off to give thanks (hurrah!). Next week I’m in Oxford Thursday & Paris on Friday. The week after that Andrew is in Paris for two nights, then we’re taking a day off for the Varsity Match and then we’re heading to York to celebrate my birthday. And the week after that I’ve got one day in Oxford, and I’m heading home at the end of the week. Nor are things likely to get more settled after Christmas: we’re on honeymoon for the first 3 weeks of January, then I’ve got a week in the office, after which I’m spending two weeks in California and then a couple days in Dublin. So I’ll basically be back in London in mid-February. Sigh.

I shouldn’t complain, of course. I know I’m lucky to have any job (let alone an interesting and fulfilling one) in this economy. But I do wish I could have a bit more of a routine. Also, since Andrew and I are now in active house-hunting mode, it would provide valuable time to find a permanent place to live.

The weather continues to be fantastic (we’re apparently on course for the driest November in 300 years), and we’ve been making the most of it. I went for drinks at 6 St Chad’s Place with my high school friend Mikey on Friday evening, and then dinner at the Fellow. I went for a run Saturday morning, and then Andrew and I went and fought with our bank (the lesson: just deposit dollar cheques in your US bank account and then make a transfer), and then we went to the V&A with Tamson before cooking dinner for Dottie, Emma and Bianca.

Sunday was more relaxed. We went to Luke & Jessica’s place for brunch with Simon, and then for coffee. Then I headed home to read while Andrew went to the gym. En route, I picked up a bottle of  Glenlivet 16 year Nadurra cask strength. Yum.

The fifth estate?

A note: I started drafting this on Tuesday, but then got caught up in work and finished it today.

Much ink has been spilt in recent weeks discussiong the extent to which the influence of the European Union (and specifically European Commission) over recent changes of government in Greece and Italy represent an undermining of democracy. Less has been said about national sovereignty, which in itself indicates the degree to which European integration has progressed. That other international superstructure–“the market”–seems unable to stay out of the fray: this week bond yields were up significantly not only for Italy and Greece, but also Spain and France. Italy is back in the danger zone, and Spain is teetering near it. Less than one working day after the passage of reform measures and Berlusconi’s resignation, Italy’s new government the press was openly discussing whether it was a failure. Setting aside the fact that I’m not sure Italy could have been said to have a new government in place at that point, it now appears that the most potent force in this whole mess is not the oligarchic bullying of the Frankfurt Group but the quasi-rational and quasi-populist tyranny of the market.

This raises an interesting set of questions: at what point will “the market” “declare” the Euro to be a failure? Who will win in a battle between two quasi-democratic institutions, both of which lack inbuilt mechanisms for defending the interests of society? Will the European Union be salvageable in the aftermath of the Euro’s disintegration?

Despite the way it’s talked about in the press, we must remember that “the market” (I promise to stop putting it in air quotes henceforward) is not a thing in the same way that the European Union is a thing. It’s million and millions of transactions occuring every day around the world, and the prices at which different things are bought or sold is a barometer of where people see the value in something–whether that’s a fish or a share of stock or a collateralized package of ill-contemplated subprime mortgages. Insofar as there are people deciding what a particular thing is worth, the market is a bit like voting. Indeed, runs on the market exhibit the same antisocial populism that can blight democracy (and which are the reason we tend to have constitutional protections against the worst excesses of majority rule). But there are some features that fundamentally distort that analogy and undermine the market’s tenuous claims to democratic legitimacy. The first, of course, is that (at least when it comes to global markets) the participants represent a tiny fraction of society at the far end of the spectrum of privilege. Second, it’s not always people doing the voting; in many cases it’s actually algorithms. Third, the speed at which the market moves means that individual transactions can be rational, but that the market as a whole–and its many vicissitudes–is not necessarily so. If you haven’t read it yet, Donald MacKenszie’s fantastic essay “How to make money in microseconds” is a fantastic guide to the technological knife’s edge on which the brave new market balances.

The fourth estate is a long-recognized concept in representative democracy, and over the course of the 20th century it generally came to be understood to refer to the press. Despite its (often ignored) commercial motivations, the freedom of the press from government interference has been a a recognized aspiration of modern western society.  That independence has given it the chance to make and unmake individual policies and whole governments. Most people argue that is a good thing: holding our elected representatives to account.

Does that mean that the market is the fifth estate? It exceeds the press in blunt commercialism, but it has shown itself in recent years to share the ability of the press to make or unmake governments. It is more dispassionate than the media are (the grudges of press barons can, after all, pervert public discourse even in opposition to the public interest), but it is also less rational and, being a global set of transactions, checking its excesses seems even more difficult than enforcing a super-injunction in the age of the web.

If the market is the fifth estate, we should decide as a society whether protections similar to those granted to the “free press” make sense to protect the “free market”. In answering this important question, it’s worth remembering that governments put themselves at the mercy of the market. The press co-conspires with popular opinion to affect the government, and though that influence can wax or wane based on a variety of factors (the majority enjoyed by the party in power or the length of time to the next general election), it is omnipresent. Governments are only susceptible to the market, on the other hand, when they need to borrow money.

As a historian I am now required to say it has been ever thus. Funding those in power has always endowed the funders with power. The City of London and Parliament both earned their rights from the English Crown by negotiating the conditions of loosening purse strings. But history is littered with examples of such tactics backfiring–when the resentment of the centre of power has boiled over: the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and the suppression of the Knights Templar in 1312.

Where does that leave us? I think there are some fundamental changes that could be made in the way modern markets operate that could curb some of their excesses. I’ll talk about those another time (after I’ve spoken to some people who understand these things better than I do). In the meanwhile, all this seems to undermine the oft-argued notion that governments need not live within their means in the same way that households are expected to. In both cases, debt seems not to be a problem until it’s time to pay the piper, as it were.

 

Leaves

One of the materials they use for paving London streets uses a finer-grained material than the others. It’s used for surfacing bike & bus lanes, but I’ve also noticed that there are a few places, like where High Holborn meets Drury Lane.

Anyway, I’ve noticed this alternate paving surface because when someone drives over a leaf that’s fallen on it, the leaf gets caught by the grit. Over the past few weeks, since it’s been both autumnal and dry, there are places where lots of leaves have been worked into the pavement, making little bits of London’s roads look like an art project I did when I was 4 years old.

In this picture you can see the main paving material along with a bike lane that’s retaining the leaves.

 

Rules for invitations

I promised to include a series of posts on rules for a more satisfying [modern] life. So far I’ve done posts on bicycling and drinking, and a more general post on the concept of paintballable offences. So here’s one on invitations, Rsvps and events.
In my personal experience, it has always seemed as if the advent of digital technology has made people rather dim on these things. I suspect social historians could point me to dozens of similar complaints from the past. I know myself that Miss Manners has rails against pre-stamped response envelopes in wedding invitations because they enable laziness on the part of guests, and if you give an inch of laziness, people will take a mile.
At the end of the day, of course, the technology through which an invitation is communicated doesn’t change the etiquette expected of the people involved. So here goes:
  1. Respond to invitations with a yes or no. Do so in good time.
    Especially when it comes to a dinner, numbers matter.
  2. If you say no, you don’t need to explain why, so for pity’s sake don’t lie.
    People always feel the urge to explain whey they can’t make it. That’s silly for an individual instance. If you’ve declined 3 invitations in a row, you might want to explain that you don’t hate the person. Otherwise, don’t stress it.
  3. If you say yes, only cancel if there’s a real emergency.
    A better invitation is not an emergency. Nor is a having had a long day. Man up.
  4. Going to dinner? Take a bottle of wine, but don’t expect to drink it.
    Self-explanatory.
  5. Only get really drunk if you have a designated chump to take care of you.
    It would be hypocritical of me to say don’t get really drunk. But do make sure you’re not going to die in a gutter. It would be so embarrassing for everyone who knows you.
  6. Show up at an appropriate time.
    This will vary according to the type of event. Show up at the stated time for a wedding. Show up 15-25 minutes after the stated time for a dinner party. Show up 30-45 minutes after the stated time for a house party. I have a large family, and these rules seem to have been passed down to all of us by our forebears. My sister hosted a brunch for me a few years ago in Seattle. ~20 cousins were joining us from many parts of the city. Everyone showed up between 10.15 and 10.25, making the whole experience wonderfully predictable.
  7. Don’t be the last people to leave.
    Unless that’s what the host expects of you.
  8. Don’t insist on cleaning up if your host objects.
    Seriously
  9. Send a thank you note.
    It takes 2 seconds and will make your host’s day.
That is all. They’re not difficult. We can all do them, and they’ll mike life so much more pleasant.