Miscellaneous night thoughts

[rivka]

Misha and I watched a PBS documentary this evening, People Like Us. According to the Baltimore Sun, it's the first major US television program dealing with the subject of social class. It was fascinating, hearing people articulate all of the class markers that are usually unspoken or even subconscious. One of the things that struck me most - and I don't know whether this is the bias of the film-makers coming through, or whether it really is the prevailing opinion in America - was that people at every social level seemed to share the conviction that you can't change your class. You can accumulate money, but you can't change your class. That seems particularly interesting in light of the fact that most middle- and upper-middle-class Americans seem to assume that everyone wants to join their class. That people aspire, not only to their bank accounts, but to their lifestyles and possessions and goals. Maybe some do, but I got the strong impression from this documentary that it's not as universal as the purveyors of "the American Dream" (note the singular noun) try to convey.

(I'm not finding myself as eloquent about this as I wanted to be. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow. But see this documentary if you can, if they rerun it (or haven't run it yet) in your area.)

Someone on rasseff posted a pointer to the cover of this week's New York Times Magazine. It took my breath away. It's... beautiful and wrenching, in equal parts. Hard to look at. Hard to look away from.

We went back to church today. They went ahead with their obviously-long-planned celebration of having restored the first of their Tiffany windows. (This is a gorgeous church - Romanesque architecture and seven authentic Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows. I thought Unitarians were supposed to be simple, plain folk. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.) So there was glorious music and joy in beauty and celebration - and then of course, still the agonies of mourning. New names to add to the list of Maryland dead. A sermon filled with pain. And then an elderly woman talking about the church history in her lifetime - rioting in the streets of Baltimore after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. White flight to the suburbs, and the church half-abandoned. Marked for charity by other UU congregations. Wondering if their mission had become irrelevant. And then the congregation rebuilding, and re-dedicating themselves, and growing, until now they have the luxury of spending energy thinking about how their windows look. (They're going to put lights over the windows on the inside, so that people walking the streets of downtown Baltimore at night will be able to see the beauty of the stained glass. That's cool.)

It was good to be reminded that things have seemed as dark as they could possibly be, before. That in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it must have seemed as though America's cities were self-destructing, that open race war would break out, that there was no hope in trying anymore. I've read things from that era, and that's certainly the sentiment. But Baltimore - rough as large parts of it still are - is really coming back. Other cities are as well. They thought they could see our well-greased way right to the bottom of the pit, and they were not entirely correct. It's good to be reminded of that.

In petty personal news, I'm trying to decide whether or not to go to Capclave. There's an ever-increasing list of cool rasseff people who are going to be there, and it's only a few miles away from where I live. I couldn't go for the whole weekend, probably, but I could get a one-day membership for Saturday. So why not? Strangers. There will be strangers there. It's the same story it always is. There would be all of these incredibly cool rasseff people whose posts I admire, and then there would be me feeling shy and geeky and out of place and unable to talk to anyone. Yes, I realize how ironic and stupid it is to worry about being too geeky for SF fandom. I may just be beyond hope.

Comments

NYTM cover

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of last week's cover of The Stranger (local alternative weekly). They got wildly mixed reactions to it.
http://www.thestranger.com/2001-09-13/index.html

For Capclave, would it help if you made specific plans to meet a person at a certain time/place and go around with them? It helps me when I'm feeling too awkward, because then I'm not the focus and I can be involved in conversations without having to start them.

Re: Capclave

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It might help. There actually is someone who kindly offered to set up a time to meet me, but you know, she's a stranger too.

It's hard to believe I have a job where I work with the public every day, isn't it? Actually, I think I usually do fine in social situations once I get into them, ap7 possibly excepted. It's the approach that's difficult.

I like the Stranger cover, but yeah, it's intense. I could see where some people might be pretty upset by it.

Re: Capclave

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

I hope this went well.

[rosefox]

The Village Voice cover is the one that got me:

http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0138/cover.jpg

Harry set aside a copy of it for me to take home. I'm glad. That's one that ought to be saved.

[firecat]

Re: "you can't change your class," I had a conversation with someone this weekend that went exactly that way -- we agreed that class is not about how much money you have. It's a cultural thing.

I recommend The Millionaire Next Door on this subject, which points out that many of the people with money don't "act like" they have money; and many of the people who surround themselves with expensive possessions don't actually have money because they have spent it all on their expensive possessions.

Re:

[rivka.livejournal.com]

*nod* In the documentary they had a few upper class people talking about things that distinguish people who are upper class from people who just have a lot of money, and a lot of that came down to ostentatious display. (For example threadbare Oriental rugs were mentioned as a marker of "actual" upper class status.)

Then there was a guy with a strong working class identity, a fireman, who had managed to make a lot of money. He'd added on to the back of his unassuming-looking ranch house, and put in a pool, and was providing his family a lot of comforts - but there was no mistaking the way he chose to live for the way that upper-middle-class people with roughly the same amount of cash chose to live, and he was obviously happy that way. It was interesting.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Re: "People like us", let me add a vote to "not just the filmer's prejudice". There are a lot of jokes/ideas about this in our society, from talk about the nouveau rich to films based upon a person from another class joining a given class and setting things on their ear. (Of course, any story must be based upon "if this didn't happen, there wouldn't be much fo a story".)

Anything coming from *MY* brain can't be counted on to be typical, but I also notice the same sort of thing in my feeling of victory in shopping in a good men's clothing store. "HAH! Fooled you all into thinking I belong here!" Of course, I'm not really 'fooling' anyone, insofar as I'm not being deceitful. I think the only thing that makes for a real difference is that I now know about the scale of clothing prices and if I find myself looking at a $500 suit, I can decide if I want it and can afford it. That, in itself, helps keep me from feeling out of place.

Good luck regardless of your feelings at capclave; you probably have less to worry about than I do when walking into a men's clothing store, but then, my worries aern't rational either.