The USA and other disasters. Actually no, just the USA.
Hello invisible blog friends, it’s been ages! Steve and I just got back from two weeks in the US, and are just about over our jet-lag. We arrived home to find the vege garden growing triffid-like and our little house just as we left it. And let me tell you, I’ve never been so glad to come home. I have a bit of a love affair with the USA - the mad politicians, the movies, the 50s diners, the vintage clothes - but on this trip I saw a lot more than I ever have before of the real USA.
When we visited New York in 2005 I wasn’t as interested in current affairs and politics as I am now, didn’t read very widely and didn’t look further than the surface. But visiting the US now, knowing what I know about the financial crisis, the plight of the poor, the dishonesty of the government, was really quite depressing. I saw New York, in particular, in a different light. Yes there are still the busy, zippy New Yorkers off to high-powered jobs and dressed in beautiful clothes, still the gorgeous stately tree-lined avenues and majestic museums. But for every carefree gorgeous young thing on a cellphone there were ten immigrants exuding palpable despair. There were eighty-year-olds begging in wind-tunnel canyons between buildings, homeless men sleeping in the filthy subway, and everywhere the manic urge to buy, buy, buy. The paper was full of stories of mortgage foreclosures, the news choked with financial disaster, and everywhere we saw people spending, spending, as if their lives depended on it.
We also ended up (accidentally) in Queens on our first morning, at the mercy of a non-English-speaking taxi driver. The squalor and danger that some people live in was appalling. Looking at the dirt and degradation that people in these awful neighbourhoods have to endure makes me wonder how some of them even get up in the morning. Are they so deadened by their surroundings that they don’t see them any more? Have they simply given up hope and just live day-to-day? And all these immigrants, many illegal, who leave their homes and families in Mexico to earn more money - they simply end up cleaning toilets and living in the Bronx, alone and fearful. It’s no kind of life, but for many people on the lower social rungs, the financial balance is so precarious that if they try to change anything, to take a chance on a new life, they could end up on the streets and even more hopeless than they were before.
And as far as home ownership goes, it’s shocking just how easily people can fall. In New Zealand, if you lost a job, couldn’t pay your mortgage and had to foreclose, there are so many safety nets. There’s the dole, accommodation supplements, free healthcare, and there’s very little chance you’d be out on the streets. In America, the step from homeowner to homeless is shockingly easy. I was having lunch with a friend of Steve’s one day and asked her what happened to people whose homes were foreclosed on.
“Well,” she said, “you can declare bankruptcy, but you’ll never get your credit rating back. Often, if they have no-one to help them out, they become homeless.”
“What, just like that?” I said, shocked. “It’s that easy?”
“It’s that easy,” she said. “Of course, there are shelters they can go to.”
Small comfort, I say. With your health insurance tied to your job, if you lose your job you lose your healthcare cover and have to pay for EVERYTHING. We met a woman who has Lyme Disease, and although she and her husband both have jobs and decent healthcare coverage, they’ve had to go into debt to pay for her treatment, which will be ongoing.
But onto something more hopeful - the election. Having watched the candidates’ back-and-forth for two solid weeks, I’m in a state of almost religious fervour over Barack Obama. The man is incredible. Solid, thoughtful, measured, hopeful, realistic - he’s a born President.
McCain, on the other hand, I’ve dubbed ‘Uncle Fluffy’ (I think I may have stolen that from the West Wing, but can't remember. Geeky WW trivia fact - on the Declaration of Independence (which I saw) there's a signatory named Josiah Bartlet!). He looks like he’s going to keel over at any minute and flounders around for his words when Obama is so straightforward and direct. The Republican campaign has been so nasty, so pointed, attacking without measure and sometimes outright lying about Obama. Obama, on the other hand, has maintained the moral high ground. His attack ads attack the policies, not the person. One especially clever one aired just before we left. McCain has been going on about how he’s not George Bush and he’s totally different, blah blah blah. The Obama campaign aired a very simple ad, a clip of McCain at some event saying “I have voted with the President on over 90% of issues, more in fact than many in my party have.”
The political panic in the air is almost palpable. The country desperately needs a change, and the Democratic voters are petrified that the Republicans will ‘steal’ the election again like they did in 2004. The Republicans are petrified that they won’t. Early voting has turned out massive numbers of people, mostly black and Hispanic Democrats at this stage, and they are projecting a larger voter turnout almost than ever before. I am scared for America if Obama doesn’t win. Whoever wins will sink into a massive hole of problems and have a Herculean task to try to pull the country out. But surely it’s far better to have an intellectual committed to change who will actually THINK at the helm rather than a return to the same problems that got the country into this mess? And having seen more of the VP candidates, I’m enormously impressed by Joe Biden as well. I didn’t have a great impression of him before we left and thought he might be just as much of a liability as the Palinator. But having watched him interacting with the press, and watching some of his policy speeches, I’m really impressed. He also has a real gravitas, despite saying the odd silly thing. He could definitely be President, unlike Sarah “and I can see Russia from my house” Palin.
I can’t wait until tomorrow to find out who wins.
So anyway, that’s that. I’ll write more about the good stuff (mainly in the form of vintage clothes) next time!
When we visited New York in 2005 I wasn’t as interested in current affairs and politics as I am now, didn’t read very widely and didn’t look further than the surface. But visiting the US now, knowing what I know about the financial crisis, the plight of the poor, the dishonesty of the government, was really quite depressing. I saw New York, in particular, in a different light. Yes there are still the busy, zippy New Yorkers off to high-powered jobs and dressed in beautiful clothes, still the gorgeous stately tree-lined avenues and majestic museums. But for every carefree gorgeous young thing on a cellphone there were ten immigrants exuding palpable despair. There were eighty-year-olds begging in wind-tunnel canyons between buildings, homeless men sleeping in the filthy subway, and everywhere the manic urge to buy, buy, buy. The paper was full of stories of mortgage foreclosures, the news choked with financial disaster, and everywhere we saw people spending, spending, as if their lives depended on it.
We also ended up (accidentally) in Queens on our first morning, at the mercy of a non-English-speaking taxi driver. The squalor and danger that some people live in was appalling. Looking at the dirt and degradation that people in these awful neighbourhoods have to endure makes me wonder how some of them even get up in the morning. Are they so deadened by their surroundings that they don’t see them any more? Have they simply given up hope and just live day-to-day? And all these immigrants, many illegal, who leave their homes and families in Mexico to earn more money - they simply end up cleaning toilets and living in the Bronx, alone and fearful. It’s no kind of life, but for many people on the lower social rungs, the financial balance is so precarious that if they try to change anything, to take a chance on a new life, they could end up on the streets and even more hopeless than they were before.
And as far as home ownership goes, it’s shocking just how easily people can fall. In New Zealand, if you lost a job, couldn’t pay your mortgage and had to foreclose, there are so many safety nets. There’s the dole, accommodation supplements, free healthcare, and there’s very little chance you’d be out on the streets. In America, the step from homeowner to homeless is shockingly easy. I was having lunch with a friend of Steve’s one day and asked her what happened to people whose homes were foreclosed on.
“Well,” she said, “you can declare bankruptcy, but you’ll never get your credit rating back. Often, if they have no-one to help them out, they become homeless.”
“What, just like that?” I said, shocked. “It’s that easy?”
“It’s that easy,” she said. “Of course, there are shelters they can go to.”
Small comfort, I say. With your health insurance tied to your job, if you lose your job you lose your healthcare cover and have to pay for EVERYTHING. We met a woman who has Lyme Disease, and although she and her husband both have jobs and decent healthcare coverage, they’ve had to go into debt to pay for her treatment, which will be ongoing.
But onto something more hopeful - the election. Having watched the candidates’ back-and-forth for two solid weeks, I’m in a state of almost religious fervour over Barack Obama. The man is incredible. Solid, thoughtful, measured, hopeful, realistic - he’s a born President.
McCain, on the other hand, I’ve dubbed ‘Uncle Fluffy’ (I think I may have stolen that from the West Wing, but can't remember. Geeky WW trivia fact - on the Declaration of Independence (which I saw) there's a signatory named Josiah Bartlet!). He looks like he’s going to keel over at any minute and flounders around for his words when Obama is so straightforward and direct. The Republican campaign has been so nasty, so pointed, attacking without measure and sometimes outright lying about Obama. Obama, on the other hand, has maintained the moral high ground. His attack ads attack the policies, not the person. One especially clever one aired just before we left. McCain has been going on about how he’s not George Bush and he’s totally different, blah blah blah. The Obama campaign aired a very simple ad, a clip of McCain at some event saying “I have voted with the President on over 90% of issues, more in fact than many in my party have.”
The political panic in the air is almost palpable. The country desperately needs a change, and the Democratic voters are petrified that the Republicans will ‘steal’ the election again like they did in 2004. The Republicans are petrified that they won’t. Early voting has turned out massive numbers of people, mostly black and Hispanic Democrats at this stage, and they are projecting a larger voter turnout almost than ever before. I am scared for America if Obama doesn’t win. Whoever wins will sink into a massive hole of problems and have a Herculean task to try to pull the country out. But surely it’s far better to have an intellectual committed to change who will actually THINK at the helm rather than a return to the same problems that got the country into this mess? And having seen more of the VP candidates, I’m enormously impressed by Joe Biden as well. I didn’t have a great impression of him before we left and thought he might be just as much of a liability as the Palinator. But having watched him interacting with the press, and watching some of his policy speeches, I’m really impressed. He also has a real gravitas, despite saying the odd silly thing. He could definitely be President, unlike Sarah “and I can see Russia from my house” Palin.
I can’t wait until tomorrow to find out who wins.
So anyway, that’s that. I’ll write more about the good stuff (mainly in the form of vintage clothes) next time!