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Miscellaneous night thoughts
Sep. 24th, 2001 01:05 amMisha 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.
(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.
