Times ten (en route to New York)

I had set up a number of expectations with this blog. I recently undertook to learn something of the Native American languages relevant to each of the places we visited along the way. I had also thought to call this blog Walking with Americans. Well firstly, "Kuwiingu-neewul. Tha ktulamalsi kway kiishkwihk?" which in the Munsee Delaware that was once widely spoken in southern New York (and is obviously still known), translates, I understand, to: I'm glad to see you. How are you today?

We're now in New York. Now, parts of Arizona and New Mexico (and California) may remind me of Oz, but it never gets this green in Australia, no matter how far east we go.

Gun-metal greys, sheep-fleece yellows and admittedly penetrating blues; but that's the green extent of the character-forming spectrum in Oz.

As for 'walking with Americans', we sat with quite a cross-section during the three days and nights on the train from Los Angeles. We met a former naval captain who told us about his grandfather who served as a fighter pilot in China in the 30s, resisting the Japanese before anyone knew the US would enter the Second World War, and about an aunt who had gone over to China to serve; met a woman from Santa Fe who worked as a set dresser on films. I must have drunk too much coffee because I realised at one point that I was almost interviewing her: "Do you cringe when you see something on the shelves behind a character that couldn't have existed at the time of the film?"; "Do you ever work with the actors on the sorts of furnishings their character would have chosen for themselves?"; "Do you ever have situations where the actor, improvising, picks up a piece of crockery or furnishing that was meant to be left untouched, and it suddenly becomes the domain of the prop-master?". (She told us, for example, that she might have to point out to a director or production supervisor that you cannot have particular bottles on the shelves because "the train didn't get that far in 1885"  and the bottles had only just been patented.) On the leg from Chicago we met a Washington lawyer who had known Barack Obama at Law School, said he was very smart, and not only that: a good basketballer! This guy was interested when I told him about Governor-General Kerr (the Queen's delegate appointed on the recommendation of the prime minister) sacking the prime minister (Gough Whitlam) and his government in 1975 and exercising powers in our country that the Queen herself  no longer possesses either in Australia or the UK. He asked us what the latest issues were in Australia, and we couldn't tell him. I mean, we're glad we remembered to vote in the NSW state elections.

It was interesting, though, explaining to him why we'd come to the US at this time. Some Americans are bemused: the economy is so 'bad'. But, as I explained to him, the scope is still so much larger than in Australia; we have 30 million people in a space the size of the lower 48, they have 300 million. I mean, the kerbs at crosswalks are shod in iron, presumably to protect against the eroding effects of millions of feet. Even an America tightening its belt is a bigger pool than Oz.

Yesterday we went into town (Manhattan). For starters, I love even the least noticeable public art (this, from the subway):

But I was floored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A single masterpiece is one thing, but whole walls and rooms of them! And to be honest, I was stopped in my tracks before I'd entered a single gallery when I saw the names of the original benefactors: Joseph Pulitzer, Pierpont-Morgan, Juilliard, John Jacob Astor...the level of activity and contribution is continental in scope.

Sequences

We have left LA now. I couldn’t find any Gabrieleno/Tongva words on the net, and the few Serrano words I found are not quite appropriate. Maybe I’ll do better further on.

But we had a farewell party the other night. The first guy I met was a truck driver named Ben. We talked a bit about the hard economic times and so on, but we didn’t talk about it too much. I figured that if had, we would probably have gone on to the high gas prices which people raise here quite often, and drilling and so on. Ben said he'd been in Sydney for a week many years ago and loved it. I wondered why only a week; how old he might be.

Sal, who turned up next, hasn't been to Australia, even though he had had an opportunity to spend some time there after ‘Nam in 1969. I said, 'You're not old enough to have been in Vietnam, surely?' and he said, with one of those great New York accents: 'I like this guy.' Later, a woman called Eleanor turned up and he sang, 'Eleanor Rigby...' I said: 'Oh yes, you are,' and we laughed.

At mealtime I sat at a table outside with a bunch of people who became really, really vehement about the Tea Party and ‘the Republicans' etc... how the Supreme Court has just passed a couple of doozies and they sound pretty bad (including: a convicted person can't apply to have DNA testing of evidence once s/he's convicted - well, can you imagine the Pandora's Box??) but I wondered about how loud they were talking and the people next door and in the neighborhood and how these forthright opinions might be going down.

I got up to go to the kitchen and as I walked past the group sitting around the lounge suite inside, they were all leaning forward. Sal was talking – holding them intent - and I caught phrases like: 'had nine days left to serve' and 'they asked me to' and 'had to go out against this Gatling Gun up in the hills which had been going on continuously for a couple of days'. He mentioned guys he’d served with who’d died with only days left to serve.

When I went back outside, the other table were now saying how disgustingly the government treats veterans, not just the Gulf veterans, but the way the Vietnam veterans were treated, etc... I wondered if we should move inside.

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We were just now on the train travelling through seven states on the way to Chicago.

I looked out the window past Gallup and saw a sign farewelling travellers from a roadside stop. 'Ahéhee' (thank you) it said, in Navajo.

Woke up this morning to my first glimpse of Kansas. Somewhere in Missouri, I went and got a coffee. 

The guy in the Snack Bar had a copy behind the counter of 1865 by Jay Winik who contends that the US was saved at the end of the Civil War by the leadership of four guys – Lincoln, Grant, Lee and Johnstone. I said to the snack-bar guy, “You had some great leaders then.” He said, “I know – thank God.’ In Illinois we stopped for a few moments at Galesburg, the site of one of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. On the way into Chicago I noted the change in nature of Native American words – Somonauk, Sannouk. More consonants? 

A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley)

I loved the Adopt-a-Highway sign down on the coast the other day, sponsored by Malibu Hair Extensions.

And here is a picture that further illustrates the whimsical smorgasbord of culture that is available in Los Angeles.

A royal rejoinder (thoughts on music and the republic)

Perhaps the most memorable image for me, watching the Royal Wedding over here on CBS, was the number of people in London streets able to sing 'Jerusalem'. I also thought how lucky the British are to have had composers like Parry, Walton and Elgar who could write music to match imperial occasions or any occasion: living in an age when composers wrote for something bigger and more important to them than their own selves - the occasion, the subject, the patron or the audience. The other composers on this occasion were also able to write suitable music too - Rutter, Mealor and the fanfares by Wing Commander Stubbs. But the other striking feature of the music by Walton and Parry is it achieves this sense of occasion without losing any of its own - what Stravinsky would have called - 'physiognomy'. It's still instantly recognisable as those composers' music. Nothing is lost by serving the occasion.

The other 'heresy' that struck me while watching people in the street sing 'Jerusalem' was: "The Monarchy is not going away any time soon." Even in Australia, the republic is, say, 138 behind maybe 137 other more pressing issues. And perhaps, heresy number 3: it deserves to be.

The most substantial objection to a continuation of the monarchy in Australia would probably be the reserve powers of the governor-general, who can, and has (in 1975), sacked the democratically-elected parliament and closed down the parliament that immediately voted to restore that government. But even in a republic, someone will probably have that power. I would hope that it would be someone more qualified than a Logie winner or Olympic gold-medallist. But we don't know. Where is the detail? Where is the argument? "We should"; "it's time"; "the country around Alhyekelyelhe is nothing like the Cotswalds" (actually that's my argument). But think about what happened here - over two decades of argument from John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer to the Bill of Rights, 85 articles of roughly 2,000 words' length trying to convince just the New York legislature to ratify the Constitution (that is, The Federalist Papers). The American colonists wanted a republic so badly the guys at Philadelphia pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honour to the cause. I suspect Australians would always prefer to go to the beach before it gets to that.

PS. I also loved the trees (English field maples and hornbeams) down the nave. It was good enough to be a transformation scene from Parsifal. But this was the truly modern touch for me.

A light on the hill (the Reagan Library)

We went out to the Reagan Library on Monday, 25th.

http://www.reaganfoundation.org/

It was actually a knockout, very impressive sitting way up there on its hill overlooking the vast sweep of the Simi Valley. And inspiring, I've got to say. Just to give a sense of the scale of the building, a Boeing (Reagan's own Air Force One) is on display, standing on columns, in a space the size of a hangar (of course), looking out a glass wall over the Valley. And the library is inspiring because it dramatises just how large the Reagan story was - and Southern Californian. There are all the signal events - the assassination attempt, the meetings with Gorbachev, the signing of a treaty banning medium-range missiles, the demand to pull down the Berlin Wall. Reagan sensed, rightly I suggest, that a president should concentrate on two or three key achievements and that this created memorability.

I've actually always been intrigued by the fact that Reagan campaigned for Harry Truman and endorsed Hubert Humphrey (with whom he remained friends). This is what I would explore if I were to dramatise his life.What happened? What, if any, anxiety did the switch (or was it a shift) cause him? He and his father loved FDR and the New Deal - 'loved'! - so was there an emotional cost? Of course the ultimate prize was the presidency. But in the library there is a statement from one of his 1976 radio speeches:

"Our problem is a permanent structure of govt. insulated from the thinking & wishes of the people; A structure which for all practical purposes is more powerful than our elected representatives..."

So that's the beef? A permanent structure of government? Bureaucracy?

There is one important difference I sense in the Reagan philosophy and that of his heirs in the Tea Party. Reagan had a sunny personality. He was personally engaging. His politics comes from a positive belief in the inherent goodness of people, following from a long-held principle of American society. The founding fathers saw Native Americans all around them who seemed to have no government; they seemed to have no regulation. Franklin talked about this in his Concerning the Savages of North America and so did Jefferson in a chapter of Notes on the State of Virginia. And the theory is that people left free to fully explore their own capabilities will generate goodness to all. But does it happen? I remember seeing a letter from Jefferson to a Shawnee explaining that "with us a majority suffices". The Iroquois Confederacy, however, looked for unanimity and, in the old days, used to naturally, reflexively, consider the impact of their decisions down to the seventh generation. They were self-regulating. And, even though a subsistence society, came from a feeling of plenty. I fear that the 'Tea Party' comes out of resentment and a 'poverty mentality': "Leave us alone", "there isn't enough to go round", "why should we?"; "why should we 'subsidize the losers' mortgages'?" (to quote from the radio spiel that some say started it all, and leaving aside that the pain was felt also by winners who didn't have mortgages).

One of the guides at the library told us that many people give talks out at the library (people such as Condoleezza Rice, 'not Democrats'). She said that 'Sarah' has spoken at the ranch. I asked the guide if Democrats really never spoke at the library. She said she couldn't recall any. But then she said, "they'd be welcome. This is America." And there was my ray of light.

The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center)

It was so clear from the Getty Center last night that you could see downtown Los Angeles and the sea quite clearly. In fact the view was rivetting.

I wonder even if the Center expresses a Southern Californian attitude to European art. It's meant to be a shrine to it of course, and there are great pictures like Monet's Rouen Cathedral and Van Gogh's Irises. I particularly liked the Caspar David Friedrich

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=1046

But we kept going outside to look at the building and the view. Is it possible that in the act of paying homage to European art, the shrine outshines it? At the least it dramatises the difference between an indoor and outdoor culture.

When you take a closer look

Los Angeles, it seems to me, is a city in the process of clawing its way back to live-ability. We've just been downtown from the Valley via the rapid transit and subway. And it all worked beautifully. It was well-staffed by cheerful attendants who anticipate your needs (I merely looked like I wanted to ask a question and the station-master said, "Can I help you sir?"). It was also well-patronised. This whole system has all gone in since Kate lived here. What we're witnessing is a city that is putting back public transit and overcoming the car and the loss of community that comes with individual mobility.What's more there is downtown living. The 1913 Metropolitan building has been converted to 88 lofts (a restoration made possible by the 1999 Adaptive Reuse Ordinance). All this could be considered in line with what Mayor Villaraigosa said, in praising the deputy mayor Austin Beutner's job creation achievements: "...we no longer let the palm trees do our marketing".

You can see that the downtown was once quite grand, and in places that's being restored.

And here the pavements are populated with just about the right proportion of people. We walked past the Hilton Checkers Hotel and Kate asked the bell captain if it used to be the Mayflower. Yes, he said, it did, and he took us for a tour of the ground floor ("You're very welcome"). Kate said that when she was a kid they'd dress up to come downtown from the Valley. It may take a while, if ever, to return to that. Still, much of the historic downtown is sad and nostalgic.

And you get the sense you wouldn't want to walk around down here at night. We walked past two guys wearing identical clothes, identical brocaded black Mexican handkerchiefs hanging out their back pockets, and grooming distinctive hairstyles. Gang members? I immediately felt a sense of 'keep your distance'. 'Excuse me' mightn't suffice for an excuse if you bumped into them.
 
But the other thing Los Angeles has going for it is a fascinating history. At Universal City station, there were beautiful Mexican mosaics on the platform columns telling the story of California. I just had time to read about Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor, before the train doors shut and we sped off. But then, an hour later we were walking past a building (the first three-storey building in the old pueblo) that Pico had built from the proceeds of a land sale in the San Fernando Valley.

And walking past the old Los Angeles Times building we saw a plaque that identified this as the site of the first school in the Los Angeles area (school house No.1, 1854), the site of the US quartermaster's headquarters 1861, and a camel corral for Fort Tejon.

This city has layers upon layers. (Interestingly, the oldest house in the city, the Avila Adobe of 1818, is not as old as Elizabeth Farm, 1799, in Sydney). But it is a history that is engrossing in itself, without looking to the rest of the United States. And then of course there is the Native American thread.

I must look into this. In fact, from now on, I'm going to find out about the Native American language of each area of go to. I should've looked deeper in San Diego last week, but I did discover that the locals once called San Diego 'Cosoy'.