About that Identity Crisis

I blogged yesterday about our unfortunate experiences entering Stratford Upon Avon. (My unstated conclusion was that the town is confident that William (Shakespeare) will continue to pull in the tourists, and additional efforts are unnecessary.)

That said, we did encounter a couple of wonderful, helpful people. When we got off the train in Stratford, we were on the opposite side of the tracks from the station, requiring us to negotiate one of those bridges that spans the tracks. Up a flight of stairs, across, and then down to the platform. I had the big suitcase, and a young man insisted on carrying it for me up, across and then down the steps, despite my protests that I could handle it. Bob’s experience was similar–a man traveling with his toddler daughter took both cases across the bridge for him.

In my case, the helpful young man was an Arab. Bob’s helper was black.

I don’t want to use this happenstance to draw any large social conclusions; I simply note it. But we have both remarked upon the changing composition of the English crowds we’ve encountered on this trip. Americans like to think our country is more diverse than other western industrialized nations, but if our observations are representative, multiculturalism is hardly confined to the U.S. As we looked out the windows at each of the 15 stops between London and Stratford, we were struck by the number of women wearing hijabs (even a few burkas), and others who clearly were not from stereotypical English backgrounds.

Those observations made me think about our dinner companions on the just-ended cruise. We ate with a couple from Switzerland whose son lives in Florida and whose daughter lives in Germany. The wife’s sister lives in Paris. The couple themselves have a flat in Nice, an apartment in Florida and their “ancestral” home in Switzerland. They are multi-lingual (I always feel like an ugly American around people who are fluent in three or four languages…). During our trip, we met a number of people with such multiple “homes” and what one might call “shared identities.”

Is there a point to these random observations? Probably not–unless we chalk up all these experiences to “the world is changing” and “you can’t tell a book by its cover.” Stereotypes–racial, national, religious, what-have-you–have never been particularly reliable, but in the world we inhabit, they have gone from being marginally useful to downright misleading.

Sometimes, travel outside one’s safe, familiar world is a forcible reminder that identity is a social construct.

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Calling the Chamber of Commerce–in Stratford Upon Avon

Okay….I’m the first one to bitch when we do things badly in Indy. But let me tell you–we’re WONDERFUL compared to Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Here is my tale of …woe, or whatever.

We disembarked from our fabulous cruise ship this morning, in Tilbury, outside London, and we were bussed to Victoria Station. (The cruise was wonderful, by the way. No complaints. I hope we can do it again.) We took a taxi to Marleybone Station, and the train from there to Stratford-upon-Avon. (NOT Stratford ON Avon–if you search British rail for that, you come up empty. It’s UPON, thank you very much.) The train was great. Prompt, clean, user-friendly. Impressive bathrooms.

We got to Stratford UPON Avon at 3:30 in the afternoon. Although it is quite a bustling place, there were no taxis at the station. I asked the sole employee of the place how we might get a taxi, and she pointed (disinterestedly) to a bulletin board with taxi numbers–none of which I was able to reach. I asked the ticket agent what I was doing wrong, and she responded “I have no idea” and turned away. I assumed my inability to get through  was my lack of understanding of Iphone calling in another country, but an incredibly nice young man who turned out to be from Cincinnati  told me that he’d actually gotten through, and been told that the distance from the train station to the town center was too short to justify a taxi–“you can just walk.”

So my 80-year-old spouse and I schlepped our three bags–one huge one that we’d hoped to ship home but couldn’t and two smaller ones–into the center of Stratford. And schlepped. And schlepped. Meanwhile, my poor husband was coughing and hacking, having caught a cold earlier in the week. After we’d walked a considerable distance, we saw–oh joy!–a cab stand. I ran toward the cab in front, dragging my gigantic Kirkland suitcase; he opened the door. I told him the name of our hotel. He closed the door.

“It’s a five-minute walk. Just at the bottom of that street, then turn right.”

On we went. Both of us schlepping. Bob coughing. Me sweating. (And no, I was NOT in a good mood at this point.)

We finally found our hotel. We even found the check-in desk (not a simple task.) We were informed that our room was on the first floor (in Europe that is the first floor ABOVE the ground floor). No help with our bags, no elevator. Steep stairs. No apparent concern from the desk clerk.

We had reserved and paid for tickets to “As you like it” at the Shakespeare theater, but Bob’s cough was really bad. We figured we’d do the other patrons a favor and skip the performance, but I was really worried about Bob, and asked the desk clerk where I might find a drugstore/chemist. She gave me (incorrect) directions, and I took off, fairly panicked at his constant hacking. Several wrong turns and four requests for directions later, I found a lovely lady pharmacist in a large drugstore called Boots. That was the store the desk clerk had suggested, but nowhere remotely near where she told me it was located. The nice lady sold me a cough medicine and I (literally) ran back to our hotel. (It has helped already, to my great relief. Wives really do worry…)

There’s no WiFi in our room, so we are currently in the hotel bar, responding to email and (in my case) drinking. And listening to Bob’s (thankfully diminishing) coughing.

The bar television is turned to a cricket match. I’m sure Mayor Ballard would be delighted.

All of this reminded me that, back when I was in City Hall, Mayor Bill would periodically have meetings with cab drivers and hotel personnel in the downtown area. He would remind them how important they were–how important first impressions of a city can be.

No shit.

Let’s just say I’m not a fan of Stratford UPON or ON or UNDER Avon. IF there is a Chamber of Commerce in this place, they are doing a crappy job.

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The Mystery of Michelle

So Michelle Bachmann isn’t going to run again.

I won’t add my voice to the chorus of those speculating about the reasons for her decision to quit. I don’t really care whether it was poll results, one of the federal investigations, or a personal message from Jesus.

I’m also not going to join the chorus of those who will miss having Crazy Eyes around—who are bemoaning the loss of a perfect Tea Party specimen to whom they could point and laugh (albeit despairingly).

What I want to know is how this embodiment of everything that is ludicrous and embarrassing about American politics ever got elected in the first place.

The feminist part of me suspects looks had something to do with it. A friend of mine maintains that no one would ever have heard of Sarah Palin if she looked like Janet Reno, and that is probably true of Michelle as well. If you don’t look at the eyes, she’s very attractive.

But surely, at some point, voters actually listened to her.

What did those voters think about her charge that Congress was filled with “anti-American” fifth column members? About her bill to allow light bulb “freedom of choice”?  About her rejection of evolution and climate change?  About her accusation that Hillary Clinton’s aide was a Muslim terrorist? (Cleverly married to a Jew, to throw us off the scent…)

One would think that voters who agreed with her bigotry and extremism would at least be embarrassed by her aggressive ignorance. But she was elected. To the Congress of these United States. Three times.

If that isn’t evidence that America is doomed, I don’t know what is.

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Once Upon a Time

I just saw a report about a recent interview with Bob Dole, in which he reportedly said he could not have been elected in today’s Republican party.

Not much later, I opened a book I brought with me—It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (the latter someone I used to regard in the 1980s as extremely conservative)—and read the following:

[H]owever awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.

 Last night at dinner, the lovely Swiss couple at our table for the first time gingerly broached that “third rail” of conversational amity, politics. They spend four months of each year in south Florida, where their son lives, and it has become obvious during the course of the cruise that they travel extensively.

The dinner discussion was triggered by reports of the bridge that had collapsed in Washington State; they wondered why Americans resented paying taxes that are necessary—among other things—for the maintenance and repair of infrastructure. When we didn’t bristle or become defensive—we agreed that allowing bridges and highways to disintegrate was incomprehensible behavior—they shared their distress over what they see as the appalling rancor, partisanship and short-sightedness of the current Republican party.

I remember when most Republicans were fiscal conservatives and social liberals—when fiscal conservatism meant paying for the wars you fought, and a commitment to limited government meant–among other things–keeping the state out of your bedroom and your uterus.

The next time I hear some yahoo in a tri-corner hat insisting that he “wants his country back” (presumably from the black guy in the White House, and the gay activists and uppity women who think we’re all entitled to equal rights), I’m going to tell him (sorry, but it’s always a him) that I want my party back.

Someone ought to sue the people who currently call themselves Republicans for unauthorized use of the name.

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